> On Oct 14, 2017, at 2:45 PM, Tom Brennan <[email protected]> wrote: > > David W Noon wrote: > >> I find it a little surprising that reel-to-reel tape was still being >> used in 2004 but, given that the HST alternative was really no better, I >> guess we should not be really surprised. > > Earlier this year I was at a large datacenter and happened to wander into a > room that time-warped me back to the mid 1990's. It was a tape room with > 24-hour operators waiting for highlighted mount messages on maybe 10 separate > z/OS consoles. An operator mentioned they had just gotten rid of their last > round tapes 5 years earlier, which would be around 2012. > > ——————————————————————————————————— David: Thanks for the kick start as now I remember something slightly different than yours. year 2016: I was given a tour of a large DC in the Chicago area. Like you they had a room for round tapes and some 3480’s (I couldn’t get close enough to tell). The person giving the tour told me that they got round reels and 3480 tapes in *ALL* the time. I asked what he meant all the time, he said every day the mail was delivered. I asked how they identified which tape belonged to who he said they had a barcode system. I was being a pester and asked for a WAG as to the number of reels they received every day and he said approximartely 250 he was not sure and he admitted it could be 300.
So, it seems that round tape is not even close to being dead. I checked with a friend of mine today and he said his DC got around 10 a day. Since he was a friend I thought I could push him a little and asked where the tapes came from, he told me small shops that weren’t all the large and all they could afford were round reels but some managed 3480’s he told me the 3480’s would be around for a long time as the small shops just can’t go to 3490’s because of costs. I asked him what kind of shops are we talking about, he said AS400’s and the ILK, he said there was some SERIES 1 shops as well. The tape they produces was really small, maybe 8 inches. Series 1 is essentially dead he said and sooner or later they will have to do something. That is what he told me. I don’t have connections like I used to, so I cannot verify what he said. From 20 years ago a *LOT* of small brokerage firms are determined to stay static and not change their hardware . Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
