Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bbn!apple!rutgers!att!mtuxo!mtgzz!drutx!druwy!dlm
From: dlm@druwy.ATT.COM (Dan Moore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: World of Atari
Message-ID: <4002@druwy.ATT.COM>
Date: 28 Apr 89 15:15:47 GMT
References: <17646@cup.portal.com>
Organization: AT&T, Denver, CO
Lines: 38

in article <17646@cup.portal.com>, Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) says:
> And what about Seymour-Rand's VCR tape backup cartridge??  That has
> got to be the best 'hack' to appear for any machine in many many years!
> A caridge that connects to the cartridge port and sends signals to
> a standard VCR for tape back-ups of hard drive data - each VCR tape
> holds 360Megs - incredible - and at a price under $300!

	What is so amazing about it?  Companies have been selling VCR
based backup systems for years.  When I was working at Synapse Software
(in '82) they backed up their accounting system to a VCR.  Several
companies sell them for PClones.  Of course you can buy a QIC-40 (40 meg
floppy interfaced tape, 2 meg per minute write speed on an AT) for $300.

	VCR backups are fairly cheap, if you already have a VCR and are
willing to put up with the problems they have.  (NOTE: these are generic
problems to VCR tape systems; I haven't looked at S-R's unit, they may
be better or worse.) VCR systems aren't completely computer controlled,
normally the computer can't rewind or advance the tape.  That means you
can't really do a completely unattended backup, you have to press record
on the VCR first.  They are moderatly fast, faster than the floppy
interfaced tapes, slower than the true SCSI tapes.  They are moderatly
reliable, VCRs aren't designed to store digital data with no errors.  If
you use a good VCR with high quality tapes and some sort of ECC (Error
Correcting Code) they are acceptable.  I'd still create 2 different
backup tapes every time I backed up (assuming the data is reasonably
important).  VCR backups do tend to put a lot of data onto a reasonably
cheap tape, their $$$ per meg ratio is pretty good. 

	If I was serious about keeping backups I'd get a dedicated
computer tape system (eg.  ICD's 150 Meg SCSI tape drive).  If it was
low importance data I'd either backup to floppies or maybe a VCR. 



				Dan Moore
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Denver
				dlm@druwy.ATT.COM