Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Ampex Corporation (AEXCA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DrD who wrote (12719)	12/2/1999 10:27:00 AM
From: Glenn Perry	Respond to of 17679

DrD - can you expand on that? Anyone have a clue how the capacity increased so much? I assume they are not using linear tape reading methods, which is what your conventional mag stripe reader does. Sort of like a few inches of cassette tape passing over the read head. Disk drives and floppy drives work by rotating the media over the head, but how can you do that with a rectangular card? When you insert your card in those self-serve gas pumps (which we don't have in NJ), the display tells you to "Remove card quickly", so you are making the motion required for the media to pass over the read head. I just can't believe you can read 5 MB's (and greater, from what your last post infers) by merely swiping your card - maybe they are using helical scanning heads, like the VCR or DST storage devices? With such great capacity, one could easily market a "universal card", which could include all your store charge cards, gas cards, phone cards, Visa's, MasterCards, etc. My wallet already is about 1 1/2" thick. Feels like sitting with a brick in your back pocket. You could make your choice of which one to use at the time of purchase. Of course, we'd be better off selling the KM cards to all these card companies, so maybe that's not such a good idea!