> 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
