> On Mar 8, 2023, at 7:25 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>
> On 3/7/2023 8:30 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:
>> > I’m working on a project, and I need to know the age of various tape
>> > formats. For example when were 6250bpi 700’ 9-Track tapes or DC600A
>> > cartridges introduced? Is there any good resource online that
>> > documents this? Wikipedia is of some help, but the older you go, the
>> > spottier it is.
>>
>> For QIC, qic.org has a some info. For DLT and LTO, the wikipedia pages
>> are fairly useful.
>
> What about the data cassettes used on things like Plato? Not at all like the
> audio cassettes later used on home computers.
I'm not familiar with PLATO cassettes. Are those attached to terminals? The
oldest data cassettes I know of are on the TI Silent 733 terminals -- which
were thought of as paper tape emulation done on audio cassettes, at 300 bps.
But I've never heard of anything like that on PLATO. The closest similar thing
I can think of is floppy disks, which were used as peripherals to store "micro
TUTOR" programs for some later terminals. The current PLATO emulation at
cyber1.org supports this.
Do you have any documents describing the cassettes you mentioned?
paul
