OT: just for those intersted about analog tape

[Bill Vermillion]

> On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 10:18:06PM -0500, Bill Vermillion wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 06 17:37 , while denying his reply is spam, Walter Vaughan 
> > prattled on endlessly saying: 
> > > John Esak wrote:
> > > >Is this true?  If so, how would anyone ever get new tape for their old
> > > >machines?
> > 
> > > JE, you of all people should realize that this is capitalism at work. 
> > > Someone will cobble up a line that can make the tape at a PROFIT. It 
> > > doesn't take 250 people to make high quality tape.
> > 
> [ ... ]
> > > I mourn the fact that they appeared to stop fighting 1-1/2
> > > years ago. This company saw the writing on the wall. They just
> > > gave up, hoping that tomorrow never came. But, their last new
> > > product announcement was in 2003 for professional firewire
> > > drives.
> > 
> > That was Quantegy or someone else?

> The Company Formerly Known As Ampex.

So those were Ampex firewire devices, and not Quantegy? If the
latter I was not aware they had gone into hw. As I understood it
Quantegy was only to take over the tape operations, which Ampex
orignally acquired from Orr.  Sony also built a video tape plant in
Opeleika.  Up until that time there were only three video tape
manufacturing operations in the US.  Owned by 3M, Scotch, and
Tandy.  The latter was when Tandy acquired the tape division of
Memorex and Burroughs acquired the magnetic data division.

RS kept the Memorex brand - and even put it on things like VCRs
where they had their chain of video stores they bought from Jack
Eckerd after he had to find a place to put his money after selling
his drugstores.   It's a good thing they kept the brand as I don't
think "Is it live or it is Radio Shack" would do anything but
hinder sales.

> But they said out loud in public many years ago that they would still
> manufacture 2" quad videotape *as long as their was a machine running
> in production anywhere in the world*. 

> I believe they've dumped out on that promise.

I think technically you could say there are no quad machine
running in a production environment, depending upon how you define
production.

All I'm aware of are being used to rescue/recover the jillions of
miles of quad video to get it into a stable/newer format. So those
are primarly playback and there is no need for new tape to record
upon.

I remember watching an engineer SPLICE video tape using Magnasee
to find the sync tracks before you could edit video electronically.

If you got the wrong sync pulse the picture would slip down 1/2
frame.  The last time I worked an TV was in an audio booth
as a VO announcer in about 1970 - and I think all the quads
had been replaced by 1" C-types by then.

About 4-5 years ago at an ISP I was doing work for there were
two quad units there.  One sort of worked.  They were almost used
in From The Earth To The Moon as background props.  But those were
the last I've seen of them.

The early days of video tape were like the last days of the steam
locomotive. Huge beasts with kajillions of tubes.

I see no one came up with a guess as to what Northstar was from
the other post - so I guess you or Ken can now tell the world.

Don't disappoint me on that one :-)

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com