[Sunhelp] Tape 8mm & Tape drive 8mm

[Doug McLaren]

On Tue, Oct 24, 2000 at 10:48:30AM +0800, Muhammad Harisun (EID) wrote:

| Could anybody give us what is meants by media tape 8mm ? 
| the point is 8mm directing to what measure ? Is it only a name or any other
| definitions ?

8mm refers to the width of the tape.

You may also be familiar with 4mm tape drives, also called DAT drives.

Many camcorders also take 8mm tape media -- the tape is exactly like
that that the computer drives use, but the tape that's been certified
for computer use tends to have higher quality, so it's not suggested
that you use the video grade 8mm tape on your computer -- but going
the other way is just fine.

The older 8mm drives put 2.3 GB (without compression) on a 112m tape.
EXB-8200 and 8205 were two models that used this mode.

Newer ones held 4.6 GB (but they always referred to it as a `5 GB'
drive) on the same 112m tape.  EXB-8500 and EXB-8505 are two examples
of this kind of drive.

There's a few newer models out there as well.  Some that use 160m tape
instead of 112m and can put 7GB on it (I believe it's called
`Mammoth'), and then there's some that use totally different tapes
(but it's still 8mm wide) that can hold a lot more.

Many of these drives can also be found with hardware compression and
encryption and other various features.

-- 
Doug McLaren, dougmc at frenzy.com
Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.