[HN Gopher] ArVid: Russians squeezed 4 hard drives into one VHS ...
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ArVid: Russians squeezed 4 hard drives into one VHS tape in the 90s
Author : rpastuszak
Score : 230 points
Date : 2024-01-26 10:10 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobfilipp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobfilipp.com)
| rightbyte wrote:
| Interesting. I would have really liked having one of those.
| Strange that it did not spread?
|
| I wonder what the practical reliability was. For comparison
| breathing in the same room as my first CD-burner made it fail.
|
| "your 500MB hard drive is overflowing with software, games, and
| documents."
|
| Mh ye no. Zero people filled up their HDs with documents.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> Strange that it did not spread?_
|
| I tried this thing as a curiosity many years later. It sounded
| nice in theory, but was pretty slow and unreliable compared to
| the specialized streamers. It required a fairly janky driver,
| and depended on the quality of the VHS recorder and the tape.
| Seeking was also a problem. Besides, HDDs out-sized VHS pretty
| quickly.
| ithkuil wrote:
| When I was a kid I helped setting up the computers for my
| father's small business. The disks did fill up because of
| documents. I think he counts as people too
|
| You know, it really depends what you use a computer for.
| rightbyte wrote:
| With a 500 Mb HD? How is that even possible (at the time)?
|
| But ye, of course I am exaggerating. Surely there were maybe
| a handful of persons.
| jfil wrote:
| I took some artistic liberties in the introduction :-) In
| practice, it seems that the ideal customers for this system
| were Sysops/BBS operators, small businesses that used their
| 1 computer to the max, and people who had lots of logs
| (possibly astronomers or academics running experiments).
| This also explains why it never hit mass-production: very
| few people needed 2GB of storage (a single tape). Let alone
| needing multiple tapes.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I just needed something to nitpick nice write up :)
| ithkuil wrote:
| I don't remember the exact sizes of the harddisk(s) but it
| was late 90s early 2000s and the small business I was
| talking about was a small publisher, so many of the
| documents were large DTP files, postscript files ...
| Arech wrote:
| I've just covered a few points in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39142648
|
| There were some inherent problems associated, but nonetheless,
| it was quite known back then, at least in ru.
| sunpazed wrote:
| This technology has been around for a while on a number of
| different platforms. Wizzard VHS on the C64 predates this from
| about 1987-88
|
| https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61209
| actionfromafar wrote:
| An image of an ad for Wizzard:
| http://web.tiscali.it/c64commodore/tt.htm
|
| There were also similar systems for the Amiga, I think one was
| called VBS.
| egorfine wrote:
| This brings back memories! Getting ArVid was my childhood dream
| at the time.
| kozak wrote:
| Fun fact: nowadays music is still distributed mostly in the 44.1
| kHz sample rate, and this odd rate derives from how much it was
| comfortable to store on a PAL/NTSC video tape using devices
| similar to Technics SV-P100 (when video tapes were the only
| viable way to store full-quality digital audio). So this number
| is ultimately derived from line count and frame (field) rate of
| analog TV standards.
| fathyb wrote:
| Also see the Nyquist frequency:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency
|
| 44.1kHz lets you store all frequencies from 0 to 22.05kHz,
| which ought to be more than enough for most humans.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Almost nobody hears beyond 16kHz, from testing I've done, and
| I don't think the musical content above that freq is really
| useful.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Not listening to much Sachiko M?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Correct, but a filter that's flat to 16kHz with an abrupt
| cut-off above 16kHz would introduce a lot of noise and
| artifacts, especially with 80's tech.
|
| Filters with a gradual roll-off are much smoother, cleaner
| and cheaper. 44 kHz allows a filter with only 20dB roll off
| starting at ~16kHz to be used instead.
|
| Filters are necessary because if you digitize something at
| 44kHz, any noise above 22kHz becomes noise at a frequency <
| 22kHz, aka audible.
| hasmanean wrote:
| Yeah nobody hears 16khz sine waves. But those high
| frequencies also make low frequency transients (eg square
| edges)sharper, and reduce ringing.
| HPsquared wrote:
| But if someone can't hear a high enough sine wave,
| doesn't that mean the same thing as they can't perceive
| the sharpness of transients with frequency components
| above their hearing limit? Surely if you can't hear a
| frequency when presented as a high-intensity constant
| sine wave, you're not going to hear it when mixed in with
| all the other frequencies for a short moment in the form
| of a step or impulse. Those hairs in the inner ear aren't
| going to activate, in other words (or their signal won't
| get through).
| deepburner wrote:
| I am not an expert on this but my suspicion is that human
| ear is not a linear time invariant system and thus it
| does not make sense to place a hard cutoff at some
| frequency over which you can not hear. The response might
| change wrt to the spectral content of the overall sound.
| Washuu wrote:
| I can hear 16khz sine waves when played on their own.
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's nice, try to conserve it and be careful with your
| ears. Most adults have already lost enough of their
| hearing that they can't even hear if an old style CRT
| based TV is on (which is in the EU 15625 Hz). By the ripe
| old age of 50 you're lucky to get 10 KHz and when you are
| at 70 it will be much less than that still. Babies and
| dogs can hear ridiculously good. The highest note on a
| piano is still below 5 KHz.
|
| Handy resource:
|
| https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
|
| Note that higher frequencies are very directional and you
| may have to move your head around a bit to catch the
| tone, this works best by finding something you _just_ can
| 't hear and then to move your head around to see if you
| really can't hear it or if you only can't hear it from
| that particular direction.
| fallous wrote:
| I'm 53 and I can still hear the NTSC 15.734KHz whine of a
| CRT, although it's not nearly as obvious as it was in my
| 20s. I also suspect there are some "dead" spots in my
| hearing in the 13Khz-15Khz range but it picks back up
| from there for a bit.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You're very lucky! In my early 40's I could still hear it
| but now I really can't, the cutoff is below 10 KHz
| already. But tinnitus doesn't help, it tends to reduce
| your hearing sensitivity overall.
| wazoox wrote:
| I've got a strong tinnitus, but I still hear up to about
| 14Khz (I'm 53). In fact the tinnitus is all those
| frequencies up to 21Khz I used to hear and don't anymore,
| ringing in full in my ears...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Tinnitus is a collection of different symptoms, you can
| have various forms of it, for instance where you hear a
| continuous ringing in the background, where certain
| frequencies get dampened or amplified and so on. It's
| quite an interesting phenomenon. 14Khz at 53 is very
| nice!
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I can pretty distinctly hear 18kHz sine waves and so can
| many of my friends, I don't think it's that rare.
|
| If you actually weren't able to hear past 16kHz you
| wouldn't be able to hear the ringing caused by a good
| filter above 16kHz, and you wouldn't be able to tell a
| difference in the transients either.
| treflop wrote:
| Defffffffinitely did not just hurt my ears playing really
| loud 16,220 Hz sine waves to prove someone on the
| Internet wrong.
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| I got up to 21kHz and then either I stopped being able to
| hear things or my speakers crapped out, not sure. On an
| unrelated note, those frequencies are _annoying_
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Fun fact: most "maximum frequency humans can hear"
| numbers are not actually "maximum frequency humans can
| hear" but rather where the threshold of hearing (minimum
| volume level you can hear) crosses the threshold of pain
| (minimum volume level that is painful).
| ta1243 wrote:
| When I started my career I could hear 15,625hz (the line
| rate of the CRTs in a PAL environment). I can't now, and
| not just because those CRTs no longer exist.
|
| Alas I can still hear 1khz.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Seems to be true. When I was younger (in my 20's) I used to
| be able to hear CRT whines which I guess is in the 15khz
| range.
|
| Less so now, which is too bad. I recall there being
| specific TV's which I found the whine really soothing while
| watching stuff. Computer monitors I never heard the whine
| which is up around 31khz according to some guys on Reddit.
| ummonk wrote:
| Have you done any testing with teens or children? I could
| hear all the way to 23 kHz in my early 20s. Now at 32 I
| only hear up to 16 kHz (well I can hear a slight tone at 17
| kHz but it's very slight).
| mintplant wrote:
| That's not true for me, I can hear higher frequencies just
| fine. It can cause problems sometimes! Besides the usual
| annoyances like transformers in old CRTs, there's a video
| game whose soundtrack has these horrible piercing tones
| left in, and I've only found a few other people complaining
| about it online. Most--including the composer, I assume--
| can't hear them, so are unbothered.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| I can hear that. Helps noticing neon lights go bad
| kozak wrote:
| Same for 40 kHz or 48 kHz or anything above, but there is
| (was) a specific reason why 44.1 got chosen.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> So this number is ultimately derived from line count and
| frame (field) rate of analog TV standards._
|
| Which itself is derived form the mains frequency of 50 or 60 Hz
| depending whether you're from the metric or the eagles/freedom
| land.
|
| So the digital sample rate is related to how fast the power
| pant spins it's generator turbine.
| datpiff wrote:
| > So the digital sample rate is related to how fast the power
| pant spins it's generator turbine.
|
| Also based on how incandescent bulbs will appear to visibly
| flicker at lower frequencies.
| cesarb wrote:
| > mains frequency of 50 or 60 Hz depending whether you're
| from the metric or eagles/freedom land.
|
| Sorry for nitpicking, but the huge country I live in uses
| metric but has 60 Hz for the mains frequency (and our analog
| TV standard is PAL-M).
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Canada or Australia?
| foldor wrote:
| PAL-M is Brazil as far as I know. Canada is still NTSC.
| rusk wrote:
| Very interesting. From Wikipedia:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL-M
|
| > [PAL M] is unique among analogue TV systems in that it
| combines the 525-line 30 frames-per-second System M with
| the PAL colour encoding system (using very nearly the NTSC
| colour subcarrier frequency), unlike all other countries
| which pair PAL with 625-line systems and NTSC with 525-line
| systems.
|
| So presumably PAL M runs at 60 Hz just like NTSC, which
| again comes back to the domestic AC freq
| Washuu wrote:
| So half of Japan is FREEDOM. The grid here is 60hz in the
| west and 50hz in the east.
| svantana wrote:
| Indeed, 44100 may seem like a random-ish number until you look
| at its prime factors, 44100 = (2 _3_ 5*7)^2. In other words, it
| has a lot of divisors - 81 of them in total, whereas 48000 only
| has 64.
| flancian wrote:
| For others who were also stumped here for a bit: it seems
| your text got mangled, likely by triggering markup rules.
| ITYM 44100 = (2 x 3 x 5 x 7)^2
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Is it 48000 or 49152? (49152 being 2^15 + 2^14, working well
| with a lot of binary stuff, but def not divisible by 5 or 10)
| nwallin wrote:
| DVD audio frequency is 48,000Hz. When people talk about
| 48kHz audio they're virtually always talking about
| 48,000Hz.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Another system was D-VHS [0], a digital video version of VHS with
| a max capacity of 50GB. For a time it was the highest quality
| digital video solution for consumers, until BluRay and HD-DVD
| came along.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-VHS
| retrac wrote:
| Don't forget D-1 [1], which was a hybrid monstrosity.
|
| In the 1980s, it wasn't really yet feasible to handle digital
| video in a meaningful way. No true colour framebuffers at
| 720x480 pixels and no way to move that many bits in and out of
| a framebuffer fast enough, either. But digital electronics
| could run > 50 MHz even back then, and there were fast analog-
| to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. So why not
| digitize the entire analog video signal, directly? D-1 does
| just that, sampling the the entire video signal at like 14 MHz,
| writing hundreds of megabits of data per second to tape
| uncompressed.
|
| In other words, a perfect digital copy of the analog video
| waveform. Same signal the camera generated. D-1 was rather
| widely used in production in the late 80s and 90s, and for
| broadcast playback. Surviving material on D-1 is quite rare
| today - it was a very expensive tech and tapes got reused.
| Here's an example though - Depeche Mode performing Personal
| Jesus on German TV in 1989 -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELRR7rPDvh0
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-1_(Sony)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I love that format. I wish it would have survived and been
| extended instead of all the compressed pixel heaps we got for
| two decades. :)
|
| Looking at that video reminded of what it looked like to
| watch analog live broadcast from a high quality camera, or
| high quality film (Hollywood) on an analog TV set through
| broadcast. It wasn't bad.
|
| Todays cable MPEG-2 SD channels actually have worse quality.
| (Some cable and satellite _HD_ channels have worse quality
| today even, when they crank the compression too hard!)
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Hard to believe this is from 1989, looks really good.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| > That means that variations in colour and sound were not used
| when recording data.
|
| That sounds like a massive waste of space, no? Wouldn't at least
| using RGB and within that only using three luminosity levels
| essentially dramatically increased the capacity with little
| increase in error rate which could have been addressed with a
| level of redundancy?
| dfox wrote:
| VHS stores the chrominance information heavily subsampled (even
| more than normal analog composite video) and the chroma signal
| noticeably bleeds into the luminance signal as the chroma
| carrier has lower frequency than in normal broadcast signal.
| So, using the chroma signal is not really worth the
| complication.
|
| Doing something multilevel PAM purely in the luminance signal
| is probably better approach, but one has to take into account
| that the overall level of the video signal tends to get
| "averaged-out" by various ALC circuits in the VCR.
|
| Also the cards appears to be largely software driven (it is too
| simple to do any real HW acceleration), so the main limitation
| of the bitrate probably is the performance of CPUs at that
| time.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> the cards appears to be largely software driven (it is too
| simple to do any real HW acceleration)_
|
| Both redundancy encoding and DMA were hardware-accelerated by
| an onboard FPGA (although DMA had lots of motherboard
| compatibility issues)
| dfox wrote:
| I meant the 1020 card with discrete TTL. Although there is
| that EPROM, which is apparently used in the datapath
| somehow (some kind of LUT for encoding/decoding?).
| Interesting aspect of the card is that it seems to be
| purely interrupt and DMA driven, as it has entire address
| bus left unconnected. I suspect that there is some clever
| abuse of i8237 DMA controller involved, which would explain
| the compatibility issues.
| nnevod wrote:
| EPROM stored codes for controlling video recorder - the
| card has IR receiver and blaster, you record t-e codes
| from remote voa receiver, then the card controls the
| recorder.
| dfox wrote:
| It is an EPROM (apparently 8x8KB 2764 in particular),
| EPROMs are not really intended to be in system
| (re-)programmed, so storing the IR codes in it does not
| really make sense. Proximity of pair of ALS193 to that
| EPROM makes me thing that it contains data for some kind
| of fixed pattern (by rough approximation the 64kbits work
| out quite neatly to the horizontal resolution of the
| "Arvid 1020" text on the spacer pattern shown in the
| article).
|
| [Edit: alternatively it is possible that the EPROM
| contains some kind of "microcode" that serves as
| sequencer for rest of the circuitry, which is probably
| more likely]
|
| Another interesting things are the 4 wide DIPs at the
| bottom edge of the card, these are clones of AM29705,
| which is 16x4bit dual port SRAM, apparently this serves
| as some kind of minimal buffer between whatever the rest
| of the card is doing and the DMA activity. As there is no
| IO except DMA I suspect that the card continually samples
| input and produces output, probably with the IR input and
| output being interleaved into the "video" data in some
| way (as one of the 16 bits?).
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Composite video encoding uses most space for the luma, i.e. the
| black and white portion of the image. So, to answer the
| question, it's a waste of space, but not a massive waste of
| space.
|
| Edit: what dfox said.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Spoiler: the hard drives aren't squeezed into a physical VHS
| cassette. Instead the tape is used to store the equivalent of
| four hard drives worth of data.
|
| As someone who owned VHS tapes and several 90s-era hard drives,
| and remembers the sizes of each, the title had me confused for a
| minute.
|
| Basically like an Iomega Jazz drive.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying, though I've got to say, your mind is
| interesting for considering that they might have _physically_
| squeezed 4 hard drives into (or inside?) a VHS cassette.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| I did the same, the title made me think of some long-lost
| TARDIS-esque technology exclusive to VHS tape shell that
| allowed for smuggling.
|
| Realistically it wasn't what was talked about, but it was a
| fun idea while it lasted.
| rob74 wrote:
| Interesting idea, although the weight of the fake VHS
| cassette would have given it away. Plus, hard drives from
| that era with their cast aluminium frames were notoriously
| hard to squeeze...
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| If you think that would be heavy, imagine what 120
| Libraries of Congress would weigh! You would need a VHS
| tape the length of 4 football fields.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I was imagining four present-day laptop drives. But then I
| remembered just how big HDs were back in ~1995...
| nullhole wrote:
| The microdrive[1] existed. You could fit a lot more than four
| of those in a VHS cassette.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
| gremlinunderway wrote:
| Gotta say I'm surprised anyone interpreted the title literally
| but reading it again I get it (it is conceivable to somehow
| physically fit harddrives into a cassette).
| genman wrote:
| I too considered this possibility. Though I didn't assign
| high probability to this interpretation.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I got confused by your comment because the only "size" I
| associate with hard drives is in stored data...
| eps wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240126111703/https://jacobfili...
| magic_hamster wrote:
| This was a good read. Thank you for sharing.
| jan_Sate wrote:
| Impressive. People in old days are rather creative in getting the
| most out of the existing technology.
| bobdvb wrote:
| The Quantel Paintbox graphics system which was what was
| considered the gold standard for graphics in the 80s and 90s,
| also had the option to backup it's data to video tape. Although
| that would have been expected to be broadcast tape formats rather
| than VHS.
| stephen_g wrote:
| An interesting forerunner to these, from the late '70s to early
| '80s was the PCM audio adaptor for recording digital audio in the
| same way - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCM_adaptor
|
| This is an interesting all-in-one unit with the VHS deck built in
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDCxTtn4OQ - released just a
| year or two before the CD came out.
| CPLX wrote:
| I was an audio engineer at the time. Worth mentioning the ADAT
| machines which were basically the dominant way of doing
| multitrack audio in the late 90's. All on VHS tapes.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Awesome story!
|
| Plus it reminded me that I do need to finally start on my own LTO
| project, still today nothing can beat tape if you have huge
| amounts of data to backup and/or move.
| gnramires wrote:
| I'm interested in using Blu rays (maybe M discs, which are far
| more expensive!) for personal backup, as I generally don't have
| more than 100gb of really critical data (which excludes
| everything I could just download on the internet), and they're
| said to last a long time. Blu ray readers are widely available
| too.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| I do use both Blurays and also some M discs with a burner for
| critical data. I have two burners actually and make sure each
| can read back the others and check on two hosts. Yes
| paranoid.
|
| It's basically between cloud like B2 backblaze and LTO tapes
| for many 100s of TBs. Currently using backblaze B2 and I
| think it's time to bite the bullet and get two LTO drives and
| tapes, at least it will scale up to as big as one can imagine
| and then have full control and access.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Storing digital data in video tape dates back to the 80s when
| studios used to make digital mastering on what was available at
| the moment: Umatic, Betamax and VHS. Many popular productions
| from the 80s were in fact mastered on video tape recorders paired
| to studio grade converters such as the Sony PCM-F1.
|
| https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/sony/pcm-f1.htm
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The PCM-1 came out in 1977.
| dghughes wrote:
| For my ATARI 600XLI I stored stuff on cassette tapes it was an
| official add on you had to buy. I think the command was CLOAD to
| load stuff from it. A lot of failed code from computer magazine
| programs typed in by 14 year-old me on cassettes somewhere.
| djmips wrote:
| I made a utility for myself to backup Diskettes to audio
| cassette tapes directly and at a pretty high speed but for the
| Apple II+. It worked but it also suffered from lack of error
| correcting / recovery so any errors would ruin the entire
| backup... I could probably do a lot better if I rewrote it
| today! :)
| pronoiac wrote:
| These might be useful tools, if you don't want to maintain an
| Atari 410 but do have a tape player -
| https://a8cas.sourceforge.net/
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I got to play with an ADAM computer that had games on cassette
| disk. It was interesting loading up Dragon's lair and then
| immediately dying over and over again.
| Arech wrote:
| Hehe, I had such a device long ago. It was ok-ish for making
| infrequent backups, but too burdensome to use regularly, since
| you had to bring in the videoplayer (it was a huge device,
| zoomer! :D), untangle and attach the wires. And then the
| reading/writing speed was slow, so it took a few hours to fully
| use a single videotape. Also a simple video tape wasn't very
| reliable medium, and, though ArVid had some inbuilt redundancy,
| still it was possible you won't read the data after a few
| months/years, so you had to backup the backup to be extra sure...
| But it was a solution to a problem, nonetheless. Very cheap and
| alternative-less for even twice or more money it cost. Real
| salvation even back then, so I'm happy and thankful they made it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| VHS tape used for backup purposes had the annoying habit to
| stick and break when you needed it most: when your source had
| failed.
| faust93 wrote:
| I was a lucky owner of the ArVid 1030 back in the 90s. Compared
| to my PC's hdd size that time (WD 500MB) arvid was able to store
| about 2GB of data and that was an insane amount! Good old days..
| :)
| jfil wrote:
| I am dying to know: how did you learn about the ArVid? What was
| the process of purchasing it?
|
| I haven't been able to find any ads for it, and I figured "word
| of mouth among Sysops" was the way it spread. It would be great
| if you could share your story.
| VitalKoshalew wrote:
| I guess the answer would be "Fido"[1].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet
| chx wrote:
| > using a custom file navigation program that resembled the
| popular "Norton Commander" application.
|
| I wonder whether it had to anything with Volkov Commander which
| was a COM-sized much faster alternative to Norton Commander.
|
| Fun memories: I uploaded it to SIMTEL in 1993 whose operator
| promptly complained to the operators of the university mainframe
| where I had an account for pirating Norton Commander and in turn
| I was booted from that VAX. Being 18, I ... didn't react the best
| however this incident started me on very interesting paths. One,
| I have social engineered my way back to another account (it
| didn't last long but still) and started using Unix and soon Linux
| because of this... way more useful knowledge it turned out than
| VAX/VMS.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I spent all but a few seconds left on my account on the school
| 'Prime' machine trying to figure out how to hack the time quota
| system. Near the end I got pretty nervous both because nobody
| else was even close to maxing out their quota which would
| surely have led to some pointed questions and because if I
| failed I might not have been able to turn in my assignments.
| But once that problem was solved the ROI for the time spent on
| it was paid back with interest ;)
| esafak wrote:
| Did you remember to tweak your grade?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSRigsskFR4
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hehe, no I didn't need that and besides I left after the
| first year to go earn a living anyway.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Norton Commander-inspired interfaces were all rage back then.
| RAR for DOS had NC-like, single panel interface.
| zczc wrote:
| In this tradition, 7-Zip GUI still has a dual-panel mode
| JNRowe wrote:
| Given the number of upvotes and comments on a story about MC
| a few days ago1, they're not _that_ dead now.
|
| 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39075316
| FpUser wrote:
| I use it nearly every day
| malkia wrote:
| To this day I'm still using Far Manager (on Windows) and
| midnight commander (mc) on Linux/OSX
| qiller wrote:
| I am still Far as my primary file manager and quick
| viewer/editor when I'm on Windows, and I've tried far2l
| (which is great) but for some reason when I'm on macOS my
| brain just switches and I'm back in Finder.
| malkia wrote:
| oh I wasn't aware of far2l - I'll have to try it! Thanks!!!
| chx wrote:
| Oh I am using Double Commander myself.
| FpUser wrote:
| Total Commander on Windows, Double Commander on Linux desktop
| and Midnight Commander on Linux text mode.
| zczc wrote:
| The program in the video uses Turbo Vision interface, so the
| closest thing is DOS Navigator [1]. Also DOS Navigator has some
| Arvid support [2], so it could be Dos Navigator itself.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Navigator [2]
| https://github.com/maximmasiutin/Dos-Navigator/blob/master/A...
| getpost wrote:
| Storing data on a VHS tape was a thing in the early 1980s. I
| worked on an AlphaMicro "minicomputer" with this feature.
|
| https://manualzz.com/doc/o/9paan/amos-system-commands-refere...
| jakderrida wrote:
| On your set top box, you'll find a bunch of inactive ports on
| the back. One of them (I don't remember which) is there from an
| outdated law which was to bolster some digital VHS technology.
| I think it's called like VHS-D. I learned this being a FiOs
| technician and would look up any frequent question asked over
| and over again at the end of installs.
| pronoiac wrote:
| From memory: it was a FireWire port, which could connect to
| D-VHS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-VHS
| zblah wrote:
| Both the Commodore 64 and Amiga had this.
|
| https://members.optusnet.com.au/spacetaxi64/MAIN/VFL-Video-f...
| Keyframe wrote:
| exactly. VBS was quite popular on Amiga.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| >"The ArVid software _gave users a lot of information about the
| number of errors on tape_.
|
| This was unique at a time when backup vendors preferred to
| pretend that errors didn't exist. And it was a source of pride
| for the creators. This decision gave users the feedback they
| needed to improve their use of the system..."
|
| It would be great if in the future all Flash RAM/non-
| volatile/persistent memory storage devices -- would give users
| easy access to what their hardware knows about its own internal
| errors...
|
| For example, in a Flash RAM device, most notably a USB thumb
| drive -- tell me everything you know about the blocks/regions of
| memory that have went bad and had to be remapped, when a remap
| occurred, and what new physical blocks/region was used to remap
| the data.
|
| Basically I as a user -- want to know anything and everything
| about what the hardware knows about the state of the underlying
| storage medium.
|
| Companies that are transparent about this in the future -- will
| succeed brilliantly!
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Hard drive in the pre-IDE days used to come with defect tables
| (a sticker on the unit) that told you the bad sectors. Of
| course, this is when hard drives were several hundred dollars
| in 80's money if I'm remembering right.
|
| Flash drive manufacturers whose devices sell at your local
| department store for under $15 probably don't want to give
| people a way to check what's really going on and make a case to
| return them.
|
| I would love an open-source standard storage device platform,
| though, with a standard firmware update process over USB or
| whichever interconnect. Then open-source storage device
| firmware could be developed which could have any other extra
| functions you could dream of.
| VitalKoshalew wrote:
| > These BBSs were part of the FidoNet7 network, a Russian network
| of BBSs that used software compatible with FidoNet but
| independent of its political structure. ... In 1997, a
| "newsgroup" was established at "fido7.su.hardw.support.arvid"
|
| This is technically incorrect. The BBSes were part of the
| "official" FidoNet [1] network, Zone 2. Fido7 was mostly post-
| Soviet (and not just "Russian") project to allow migration from
| PSTN to InterNet as a carrier. Also many "official" FidoNet nodes
| had additional InterNet channels which could even prevail
| traffic-wise over PSTN lines, one couldn't have a purely
| InterNet-connected FidoNet node without any PSTN presence, as
| that would violate FidoNet Policy (specifically, adherence to
| Zone Mail Hour (ZMH) [1]). ZMH was considered a core requirement
| for a FidoNet node (pretty much everything else was optional) and
| there was no consensus on dropping this "tradition".
|
| Fido7 project was created with a goal of resolving the issue of
| ZMH by establishing an additional Zone 7 as an overlay to the
| existing 6 Zones of FidoNet, that would allow for existence of
| InterNet-only nodes without modifying Policy for the existing
| Zones. The project was never accepted as part of the "official"
| FidoNet structure, but for technological reasons it outlived the
| "official" FidoNet.
|
| The author is referring to Google mirror of
| "fido7.su.hardw.support.arvid" "newsgroup". In reality, this was
| a Fido7-provided _mirror_ of the original
| "SU.HARDW.SUPPORT.ARVID" ("echomail conference-group" names were
| traditionally capitalized) where "SU" stands for "Soviet Union".
| In reality, it was a post-soviet conference-group hosted by
| backbones of FidoNet Regions that belonged to post-soviet
| countries. Such mirrors were created by Fido7 project in an
| effort to promote FidoNet beyond "old school" PSTN-bound
| community. These newsgroups (with double prefix, such as
| "fido7.su.") did not belong to Fido7 itself but were forwarded
| from the "official" FidoNet to Fido7 and then presented as UseNet
| newsgroups and archived by Google which resulted in confusion
| that led author to think this was Fido7 content.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Did anybody else notice the Borland Turbo Vision text UI in the
| first screenshot? Seeing it really brings back memories
| wdfx wrote:
| Reminds me back in the early 2000s I had a miniDV camcorder.
| There was a linux package which allowed you to write archives to
| the miniDV tapes over firewire, I think each small tape could
| hold about 12-13Gb which was quite impressive. The only downside
| is that it takes ~1hr to record and restore.
|
| In the end I never stored any critical archives on that thing, as
| I suspected (correctly) that a number of years later I'd have no
| way to read them back.
| wdfx wrote:
| ha, here's the software I used over 20 years ago:
| https://dvbackup.sourceforge.net/
| pronoiac wrote:
| dvbackup! https://dvbackup.sourceforge.net/
|
| I didn't use this either, as I worried about wearing down the
| camera heads, and DVD-R's were cheaper and more plentiful.
| wdfx wrote:
| Off the back of this I've just dug the very same camcorder
| out of a box in the loft and indeed it now has a number of
| electrical and mechanical issues. Looks like I left a blank
| tape it it which is now shredded. The built in screen works
| one time out of three power ups. I have no computer available
| with any FireWire port.
| rasz wrote:
| DV camcorder vintage gear pretty universally suffers
| leaking smd capacitors and melting belts.
| dmix wrote:
| > How long would data last on tape?
|
| > The Canadian Conservation Institute says that VHS tapes have a
| 10-30 year lifespan, on average.
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/con...
|
| That sucks, I just got in VHS for various reasons and bought a
| 1987 copy of Ghostbusters. It still works despite being 36yrs
| old. I'm curious what it means for tape to degrade and how to
| detect it in films.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| In my experience the magnetism weakens and the video just
| becomes more and more staticy. But I think there's also
| physical degradation of the tape.
| vsviridov wrote:
| There's magnetic cross-talk in effect between layers of tape
| in the spool, so it is recommended to rewind archive tapes
| every once in a while to shift the overlapping regions
| slightly.
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| The question is, was it still able to play a movie... otherwise,
| what kind of spies are they? /s
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| More precisely, it was made with Borland TurboVision (TUI
| framework) using a Borland IDE for Pascal or C++.
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