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From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: DAT's (was: NeXT Religion)
Message-ID: <1990Sep25.220448.28676@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 25 Sep 90 22:04:48 GMT
References: <20467@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <448@news.nd.edu> 	<2444@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> <Fz09a-a2@cs.psu.edu> <5612@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
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Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
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In article <5612@mace.cc.purdue.edu>, asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) writes:
|> 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.
|> 
Someone just told me Sony is about to release a read-write version
of CD. This could be pretty cheap too, if it's aimed at the mass market. And
you should be able to play all your music CDs on it too. (Don't ask me for
more information - this is definitely all I've heard about it...)

-- 
Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu