Msg: 6302 *Conference*
02-12-96 17:03:07
From: RON WIESEN
To : JOHN LATORRE
Subj: REPLY TO MSG #6300 (CHEAP STORAGE)
For a "poor man's disk drive" I use a cassette recorder with a circular tape cartridge. Radio Shack sells these tapes as "Outgoing Message Tapes" and they usually stock them in the telephone accessaries section of their stores. The cartridges are pricey (appx $5.00) but one or two are all you need to make life easier. Note that only one reel of these cartridges drives the tape loop around - the other reel just idles so you can't "rewind the loop. They come in sizes from 15-seconds to 90-seconds. I find the 30-second loops the best comprimise between storage capacity versus access time. The average access time is half of the total storage time. So a 30-second loop has an average access time of 15 seconds (I can wait that long). With a little bit of programming in BASIC, you can even let the tape run constantly and defer any CLOAD or CSAVE commands until "quiet" is detected at the cassette port. For example: you can OPEN and read a cassette file entirely to EOF, modify the data (add/delete one record), and based on current time (TIME$) CLOSE then OPEN and overwrite the file as an update operation.