Xref: utzoo comp.sys.pyramid:240 comp.periphs:1191 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!pyramid!csg From: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid,comp.periphs Subject: Re: S159 Cartridge tape Message-ID: <40260@pyramid.pyramid.com> Date: 19 Sep 88 16:09:17 GMT References: <459@Terra.cc.brunel.ac.uk> Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA Lines: 23 In article <459@Terra.cc.brunel.ac.uk> linda@cc.brunel.ac.uk (Linda Birmingham) writes: >Has anyone used the S159 8mm Cartridge Tape subsystem on Pyramids ? I don't know what people in the field have been doing, but here we've been experimenting with them in the lab. (Not me -- someone else. So everything I am writing here is hearsay, third hand, twice removed.) For those who aren't familiar with the technology, these are 2 GByte digital tape drives, using conventional 8mm video tape. I forget who we bought ours from, but all the drives are made by Sony so it makes little difference who the intermediate vendor is. While these drives are interesting, they are hardly a panacea. The big problem is reliability. The drives are rated at "10,000 hours, 10% duty cycle," which means that to achieve a 10,000 hour life you cannot use the drive more than 2 hours and 2 minutes per day. That's a little more than a gigabyte per day. If you have more than that, the drive will wear out sooner. Sure enough, when we ran the drives continuously, they died consistently in about two months. Probably to most important factor, though, is that Sony is telling systems manufacturers to wait for digital DAT drives. These will be "only" 1.2 GB per tape, but will be industrial quality and a lot faster.