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macjohnmcc | 2 years ago

it would fit easily on audio tape using an 8-bit retro computer more than likely. Babier steps!

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PaulHoule|2 years ago

Those bad boys (9-track tapes) could easily hold 40MB which was a few hundred times bigger than floppy discs of the 8-bit age and would add up to quite a few compact cassettes. (As expensive as it was, I was so happy to switch to floppy disk for my TRS-80 Color Computer because restoring stuff I saved on a cassette was always hit or miss.)

Mainframes in 1968 were handling much bigger data sets than you could handle with a micro until 1990 or so.

aidenn0|2 years ago

Helical-scan VHS tapes could hit over 2MB per inch, which is crazy dense. The feed mechanism is a lot more mechanically rough on the tape though.

selcuka|2 years ago

There is no way you could fit 40MB into an audio tape, even when using the fastest fast loader [1]. 40MB is 3.2e8 bits, which means you'd need a transfer rate of ~60kbps even with a 90-minute tape. 8 bit computers could do 1-2kbps at best.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_loader