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From: kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs
Subject: Re: DAT vs. 8mm
Message-ID: <1990Apr9.013326.11270@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 9 Apr 90 01:33:26 GMT
References: <28719@cup.portal.com>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 14

In article <28719@cup.portal.com> tms@cup.portal.com (Alexis TMS Tatarsky) writes:

>...Also, many computer
>manufacturers (HP  for instance) are going with R-DAT as standard product.

>My question is why???  8mm has a higher capacity, is faster, and as far as I
>know reliable (even though early Exabyte units proved extremely unreliable).

Part of the problem is that Exabytes are faster.  Many SCSI systems just
cannot keep the Exabyte streaming at 240+ KB/sec AND read the disk at the
same time.  The slower DAT system (125 KB/sec I think) gives the OS more
time to read and format disk data without dropping out of streaming mode.

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)