Like many of us, I remember 729s, 7330s, 3420s, 3490s, etc. I remember the well-structured use of the tapes as related to important production jobs. The new "robots" (perhaps with "virtual tapes") can do this well — although there might be a learning process involved when something goes wrong.
However, I also remember the unstructured, informal use of tapes. They could sometimes be very handy when stuck in a drawer or carried to a friend's installation or used for an unplanned "panic" recovery involving data/programs many months old. It can be a little odd how some "history" repeats itself. A considerable number of System Z ISVs use an emulated System Z for development of their ISV products. These emulators provide emulated tape drives, where the "tape" is a linux file on the emulated base PC. There are many ways to keep backups of emulated disk datasets or emulated tapes. One way is to use a memory stick and move/copy the emulated tapes to the memory stick, and store it in a drawer somewhere. Why does this process sometimes remind me of the odd usefulness of old-fashioned tapes? Bill Ogden ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
