Great links , Gus.
And from the archives a good ( though 14 month old) overview of various tape formats ....
westworldproductions.com
An excerpt from that link covering the DLT ( hugely popular- low end)
and the various high end devices. Of course the 312 is AXC's smallest drive.
<<DLT Stays On Top
Why would any DLT customer go anywhere but up, to DLT 7000? It's backward-compatible, and no other subsystem matches its
price/performance. Besides, the units are selling. So don't expect big concessions (or a next-generation) for at least a year.
Quantum Corp. is the sole manufacturer of DLT, having purchased the technology from Digital Equipment Corp. in 1995. The
first of DEC's products held 6 GB, then it released a 10-GB and later a 20-GB subsystem. Quantum's first original model, DLT
7000, is the top of the line: it holds 35 GB (native) has a 5 MB/second transfer rate. It lists for about $8,000; the cartridge for about
$100.
Jukebox manufacturers, such as Overland Data Inc., have ridden (and driven) the new wave of interest in DLT. Its LibraryXpress,
for example, holds one or two drives and ten cartridges, and lists for $10-20,000 depending on how many and which capacity
drives are installed.
Another major jukebox vendor, ATL Products, sells only through channels, so there are no official list prices. But in Europe
Hewlett-Packard OEMs ATL's four-drive/52-cartridge DLT library, model ACL4/52, for about (US)$64,000.
The High End Keeps Growing
Huge front-end costs keep unit-sales low. Some capacity breakthroughs may be announced, but they won't be products for a
while. Enjoy the vendors' hospitality, and compliment them on their big picture, but focus on contract details.
Products at the high end of the tape market are almost always mainframe-attached, so list prices are only rarely available. The
most popular are drives that employ the so-called 3480 or 3490 cartridge, developed (and named) by IBM and extensively
licensed to other manufacturers. The cartridge format emerged almost 20 years ago in response to complaints that reel-to-reel
tape was unwieldy; it is not an exaggeration to say that sales of 3480/90 media have by now exceeded a billion units. Native
capacity is currently up to 32 GB, with transfer rates around 3 MB/second. But other than for replacement, sales of new drives
have probably passed their peak.
Philips LMS is shipping a 36-track tape drive that it calls NCTP ("next compatible tape product"), which is specified to read -- but
not write -- 3480/90 cartridges. It's actually a modified version of Philips's model 3610 drive, with the same tape path and
internal components, but with a higher (20-GB) native capacity and faster (10 MB/second) transfer rate.
The NCTP drive lists for almost $17,000; its proprietary media for $85. And there is a jukebox available, model Blackjack 21, that
can also be configured for DLT. Unpopulated, it lists for $21,900.
While continuing to support the 3480/90 format, IBM nowadays is promoting its newer Magstar MP line of drives. They list for
almost $15,000, are specified to deliver 2.2 MB/second transfer rates, and employ $75 5-GB cartridges. Although this would
appear to be an overpriced product, compared to DLT and 8-mm systems, IBM justifies it by noting that users rarely fill up
higher-capacity media, and the smaller capacity of each Magstar tape yields swifter real-world access times. Magstar jukeboxes
are also available.
The current top end in tape capacity belongs to half-inch and 19-mm systems. The model MTG-110 drive, made under a license
from Sony by Precision Echo Inc., uses Sony's half-inch DTF cartridge (also used as Sony's digital Betacam professional video
tape) to store up to 42 GB native capacity. The data transfer rate is specified to be 12 MB/second.
Ampex's model DST 312 drive can sustain a specified data transfer rate of 15 MB/second and can store (in native capacity) as
much as 330 GB on a 19-mm tape cartridge. And Ampex also offers a library for it that, fully loaded, can keep 2.4 TB (terabytes)
on hand.
So when all's said and done, the huge spread of tape performance characteristics from the lowest to the highest guarantees that
tape is likely to be just as attractive for any given application as optical disk. And increasingly - -or until the next generation of
optical products arrive -- tape may be the format of choice.>> |
