> On Mar 8, 2023, at 10:07 AM, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshan...@hotmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/8/2023 9:11 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
>> 
>>> 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?
>> 
>>      
> 
> 
> Nope.  No data.  Somewhere here in the house I still have a cassette.  They
> were just like audio cassettes but much sturdier.  And had slides on the back
> where you breakout the write-protect tabs on audio cassettes.  I haven't seen
> a Plato terminal since very early 80's which is when I acquired the one tape I
> have.  I seem to remember that if you put it in an audio cassette player all 
> you
> got was noise.  No recognizable patterns.  But I could be wrong as that was a 
> long
> time ago.
> 
> I was hoping someone here had more info on it as I have always been curious.
> 
> bill

I posted a question in the "public notes" file on Cyber1, we'll see if anyone 
has any memories of this.

On the "sturdier" and write protect slides, that rings a vague bell -- I think 
the cassettes supplied with the Silent 733 terminals looked like that.

        paul

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