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.