Questions tagged [storage]
For questions on information storage on retrocomputing platforms.
56 questions
5 votes
0 answers
131 views
IBM 360 tool or utility to create custom IPL cards/tape/DASD?
If, on a System/360, I ran source code for a program intended to run on the "bare metal" through the assembler (probably Assembler D, F, or H on DOS/360 or OS/360), and then linked it, and ...
- 841
4 votes
1 answer
297 views
How to read Mark 2 vlbi recorded VHS?
Such recorders uses standard vhs cassettes for storage in digital format. But is it possible to recover the astronomical data using a classical vcr linked to an usb video grabber as a soft decoder ? ...
- 390
4 votes
0 answers
264 views
What was the maximum capacity of a magnetic bubble memory module?
I've seen a handful of bubble memory modules from the 1980s (mostly made by HP and intended for laptop computers) on eBay, of which none exceeded 1 Mbit of storage capacity. There seem to have been ...
- 889
12 votes
3 answers
2k views
What happens when I declare multiple register variables in C on older compilers?
I know that in modern compilers with optimizations, declaring a variable as register is merely a suggestion, and the compiler may ignore it, placing the variable in RAM instead of an actual register. ...
- 223
13 votes
11 answers
4k views
What was the typical amount of disk storage for a mainframe installation in the 1980s?
I came of age in the 1980s and worked on various minis and mainframes in high school and college (mostly DEC but also Univac and IBM). Even though I was an enthusiast then (as now), I never really ...
- 231
11 votes
5 answers
7k views
Could today's flash memory be used instead of RAM in 1980s 8 bit machines?
I wonder if this is possible and could be a retro-project? (Not something I would try myself, though) The bandwidth of flash is surely faster than yesterday's 1980s RAM (?) Why? One possible ...
- 941
10 votes
2 answers
2k views
What other terms have been used to describe storing working data permanently besides "save"?
Today, we "save" the file we're working on to disk. This terminology appears to be specific to architectures combining volatile and non-volatile memory. I also distinctly remember a "...
- 1,555
10 votes
2 answers
3k views
Digitally stored data world total history?
Storage clusters now reach 1TiB/s speed (cern, ceph) so I was wondering: when did the world total stored digital data reach a terabyte? Was there research on the topic? The System/360 in 1964 shipped ...
- 1,342
4 votes
1 answer
870 views
Why didn't the CD come with a caddy by default? [closed]
I've had plenty of scratched disks over the years, even scratched many myself when I was a kid. But it's my scratched copy of Call of Duty World at War for the PS3 that really makes me ask this ...
- 737
18 votes
5 answers
4k views
When did wear leveling in flash storage come up?
I think most modern flash drives (from SATA disks to USB drives) have some kind of wear leveling. Normally a block (small amount of bytes) in a flash chip cannot be erased and programed an unlimited ...
- 5,490
11 votes
8 answers
3k views
Zip drive eject "tool"
So I am trying to manually eject a Zip disk from a Zip drive. This is not a OEM Zip drive, but one made specifically for a Pentium laptop. I went to the dollar store and bought a pack of paper clips,...
- 573
7 votes
2 answers
1k views
How did StorageTek STC 4305 use backing HDDs?
StorageTek STC 4305 is often referred as the first SSD. However, from the modern point of view, it looks more like a "hardware-implemented persistent cache", if possible. I mean that it ...
- 313
10 votes
1 answer
1k views
How did Ridge Racer the arcade game store its music?
For both Daytona USA and Sega Rally (released around the same time but produced by SEGA), the arcade machines had sort of a synthesizer soundtrack with no CD-ROM involved. Only the home ports of those ...
- 103
10 votes
2 answers
3k views
Is there any hardware that lets me use floppy drives with low level formatting capability on a modern pc? [duplicate]
There's a bunch of usb floppy drives out there but it's clear they're quite limited. I want the ability to low level format my disks. Is there any usb/pci/anything adapter that can interface with ...
- 201
28 votes
4 answers
5k views
Did something like floppy disk jukeboxes for home computers exist in the 70s or 80s? Would that have been a feasible concept?
Many home computers in the 1970s and 1980s had two floppy disk drives, or owners bought a second drive, to reduce having to play disk jockey. A second drive was especially popular with Commodore Amiga ...
- 1,169