#digipresadventcalendar — Public Fediverse posts

#digipresadventcalendar #day24

The final installment is close to my heart. Nintendo released the Game Boy in the EU in 1990 (1989 in JP/NA). Cartridges („Game Boy Game Paks“) held 32KB-8MB ROM & incl additional RAM banks (8-128KB). While it was originally shipped with Tetris & Super Mario Land, over 1,000 titles were released for the sys.

My specimen is 1993 „The Legend of Zelda - Link‘s Awakening“ and my intro to Zelda.

This wraps up my data carrier advent calendar. Hope you enjoyed it!

#digipresadventcalendar #day23

In 1976 Fairchild released Channel F System - the 1st console to use cartridges. One year later Atari released the VCS 2600 which outperformed Channel F system & successor System II. Fairchild dropped out of the market in 1979.

Fairchild licensed the Channel F system to various European companies: in Germany alone to 3 (Nordmende, ITT & SABA).

My specimen is a SABA Channel F cartridge, late 70s,in the days of simple graphics and tell-it-like-it-is game titles.

#digipresadventcalendar #day22

The compact disc (CD) has been around since 1982. Co-developed by Sony, Philips & Bayer, they exist for different usage scenarios (e.g.,data, audio, video). While storage capacity for „reg sized“ CDs vary between 540-900MB, 2 smaller formats exist: the „Mini CD“ & the rectangular „v-card CD“.

My specimen are a 1993 3-disc VCD release of The Firm (in German) & a 1999 promotional mini-CD (containing only snippets of the songs) for Matthew Good Band .

#digipresadventcalendar #day21

Today‘s entry is another unfortunately short-lived example: the MiniDisc (MD). Introduced by Sony in 1992, it offered a sturdy, editable alternative to CDs in a smaller format. Downside was the limited capacity <= 177MB due to which music was compressed in ATRAC, developed for MD. While the successor Hi-MD solved some of these issues in 2005, the iPod had already been released & the rest is history.

My specimen is a BASF 74min MD lovingly copied by my bro ca 1996

#digipresadventcalendar #day20

Betamax (along with Video2000) was the unfortunate looser if the video tape Format war of the 1980s. Invented by Sony in 1975 it initially outperformed VHS quality wise but with shorter max playtime. In the times of „be kind, rewind“ it was also considered not ideal that you couldn’t tell from the outside if a tape had been rewound.

My specimen is a BASF L750, early 80s, complete with metadata cut our from the tv magazine HörZu and glued to the sleeve by my dad.

#digipresadventcalendar #day19

U-matic was developed by Sony and released in 1971. initially intended for the consumer market, the high manufacturing cost of the VCRs resulted in a shift to the industry/education/professional incl tv broadcast, where it revolutionized the news broadcast speed due to the instant playback capability compared to the previously used 16mm film.

My specimen is a copy of the 1983 documentary „Better Mind the Computer - Artifical Intelligence”. How’d that work out?

#digipresadventcalendar #day18

„Super floppy“ formats were hip in the 90s.The most successful of them was the Zip drive. Developed by Iomega in 1994, they were slightly larger than 3.5“ floppies. Due to a good cost/volume ratio, they were very popular for about 8 yrs, during which they went through 12 diff releases of size(100/250/750MB)/interface (ATAPI,SCSI,LPT,USB,FireWire) combinations. Life was wild back then!

My specimen are 2 early versions with 100MB, preformated for MacOS & Windows

#digipresadventcalendar #day17

„If you want to walk fast go alone, if you want to walk far go together“ could’ve been a motto of LTO, a tape format developed jointly by HP, IBM & Seagate and released in 2000. Since then, the storage capacity of LTOs has grown from 200GB to 45TB compressed with LTO9. While the physical size has remained the same, LTOs are only compatible with the last two previous generations.

My specimen is a 2005 HP LTO3 meaning it can be read with a drive <= LTO5 (2010-2012)

#digipresadventcalendar #day16

Digital Data Storage (DDS) was tremendously popular for backup in the 1990s. Based on the audio tape format DAT, a new DDS version came out approx every 3 yrs w limited backwards compatibility. DAT72 aka DDS-5 was released in 2003 & had a capacity of 72GB compressed (2:1).It was the last DDS 3.81mm tape, followed by 8mm DAT-160 in 2003.

My specimen is one of the typical problem cases where the tape turned almost transparent after far fewer than 50 clean cycles.

#digipresadventcalendar #day15

While tape had been used as a data storage medium since the 50s, the Wild West of competing incompatible formats probably saw its height in the 80s/90s with DLT, DDS, AIT and competing „supertape“ technologies. One of these „supertapes“ is the now obsolete Exabyte’s Data8, which was based on Sony‘s 8mm video format.

My specimen is a 1994 112m Exabyte tape that could hold up to 10GB with 2:1 compression ratio. It was used for WinNT server backup.

#digipresadventcalendar #day14

The microcasette was released in 1969, only 6 years after the compact cassette. Battling against the competing mini cassette format for a short time, the predominant use cases for micro cassettes were dictaphones (including field recordings) and answering machines. However, like their much larger sibling compact cassette, microcassettes were also used for data storage, mainly for machine operations.

My specimen is a Sanyo MC60 blank tape, ca. late 1990s.

#digipresadventcalendar #day13

Today‘s feature is the Compact (CC) or Music (MC) Cassette. Tape based like the reel-to-reel (but easier to handle) it was introduced to the market in 1963. Adoption really took off with Philips‘s intro of the tape deck for cars (1968) and Sony‘s Walkman (1979).

Nothing says German 80s childhood like Europa story cassettes. My specimen is a 1977 MC re-release of the 1973 LP Enid Blyton: „Hanni & Nanni gründen einen Club“. And yes, I still prefer my „???“ on MC.

#digipresadventcalendar #day12

Today’s entry is a special form of audio tape: the tape letter. It’s a bit like an analog voice mail and it was fairly popular b/w the 1960s - early 80s. Companies like BASF sold the tape complete with a mailing case. Tapes typically held 7.5min.

My specimen is a BASF Briefband, 1979, that was send to my father-in-law who was in a tape exchange club throughout Germany. The label on the back indicated that the content is an “information tape” and not merchandise

#digipresadventcalendar #day8

Punch(ed) cards were first used for loom automation as early as 1725, which might explain the large intersection b/w fabric crafts & digipres 😝 Hollerith introduced them for data processing for the 1890 US census, which also marked the start of the company later known as IBM.

My specimen is an IBM standard 80 column card from the German uni RWTH Aachen. While this specimen is blank, they were typically used in the early 1970s for FORTRAN code in IBM mainframes.