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From: asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: DAT's (was: NeXT Religion)
Message-ID: <5612@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 90 19:33:24 GMT
References: <20467@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <448@news.nd.edu> 	<2444@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> <Fz09a-a2@cs.psu.edu>
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 19

In <Fz09a-a2@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes:

>How about Digital Audio Tape?  They're about to hit the music
>industry.  They should drop in price after a few million DAT cassettes
>of Van Halen are sold.  Each tape holds about a gigabyte of data.  I
>would say that they will be the perfect medium for software
>distribution in another year. 

And what's more, they are FAST!  One of the computer divisions here
changed a most of their backups to Exabytes, basic Sony 8mm tapes that
ya can get for $5.  They are nice in that you can get around 10gig using
the compression routines, and 1-2gig normally.  But they are SLOW!!  DAT
on the other hand, from what I've heard from a friend that works there
(I just do backups), is that the DAT is MUCH faster as far as moving the
tape, searching, etc.  It definitely looks like a good way to distribute
software, especially if the NeXT came with a standard DAT backup unit.
Could use it to backup and put on new software.

-k