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From: eyer@azu.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Eyer)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs,rec.music.cd,rec.music.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: card punches for storage
Summary: A very BIG stack of cards
Keywords: punch card CD
Message-ID: <10515@ifi.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de>
Date: 8 May 91 08:09:56 GMT
References: <52905@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <3048@cod.NOSC.MIL> <Mc9tPpa00Wg1NFdXBg@andrew.cmu.edu>
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In article <Mc9tPpa00Wg1NFdXBg@andrew.cmu.edu> er1m+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ethan J. Rasiel) writes:
>It seems to me that as far as long-term accuracy, the punch cards would
>be most likely to survive the 25-year period.  But the question is this:
>exactly how many of those cards would be needed to store the equivalent
>of one CD?  For purposes of calculation, let's say a 45 minute long album.

Well, 45 minutes are 2700 seconds, that is to say, about 108,000,000 samples.
Let us say 110 millions. On a CD, a sample is 12 bits. A 'word' usually holds
only 8 bits, but let us imagine you can put 12 bits. A card holds 80 'words',
or columns (that's why Fortran has this silly columns requirements). So you
will need about 1,375,000 cards. I don't know the exact heigh this would be,
but if you estimate that 100 cards take 1cm (I think I under-estimate the 
number), it would be 137.5 meters !!!
I prefer my little 13x13x.5 cm CD, and I don't need a huge (compared to
a CD-player) card-reader. Anyway, using cards would require a reading speed
of 500 cards/second. Does somedy know if this is realistic ? (I wonder...)

Manu