Episode Details

This week’s episode is dedicated to my friend Jim Bougor, who passed on this week. Jim, this week’s guest (Darryl Baker), and I all worked at Collective Technologies back in the day. Darryl comes with over 30 years of backup and IT experience, and he and I walk down memory lane about the way things used to be with backups. Apropos for women’s history month, we also talk about Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace a little bit. The Grace Hopper speech Darryl references can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eyFDBPk4Yw&ab_channel=funbury We talk about all sorts of tape drives from the old days including: 9-track, VHS, QIC-180, 8mm, AIT, 4mm, TK-70s, DLTs, and LTOs. We discuss the concept of coercivity and how that relates to magnetic media. We also discuss the difference between helical scan and linear tape drives, and Darryl’s theory as to why helical scan disappeared.