On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 07:11:26PM +0200, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo wrote:
> Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com> writes:
> 
> > By the way: I never EVER knew of a re-writable FS on tape, not even
> > with individual blocks, [...]
> 
> DEC did it with the old DECtapes, on PDP-11s.  That was a very simple
> file system, of course.

I've only ever seen DECtape on a PDP-8.  One trick was to define a bad
block at the end of each tape track - so that sequentially reading
a file would not have to reverse the tape dircetion.

DECtape was made obsolete by the 8" floppy drive.

(The ones DEC made for the PDP-11 used to 'cook' the disks, and until
extra cooling was added you (aka we) had to replace the disks weekly
because they would wear out during the secong week if we didn't.)

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk