dick@ucsfccb..ucsf.edu (Dick Karpinski) (10/27/89)
I would like to have unattended operation of a backup server and or a very large archive. The media cost for either 8mm Exebyte or 4mm (who? Sony? Cannon?) video cassette systems is very very low. I believe that the drives accept their cassettes through a slot in the front of the box. It would seem easy for someone to make a carrousel or juke box to give say 30 second loading from a library of tens or hundreds of cassettes. Does anyone make such a device for sale at $5k or $10k. I'm not much interested in anything over $30k since I can't expect to be able to spend that much. The price per megabyte is much higher for any kind of optical or magneto-optical disk media. Still, the $0.20/megabyte cost for the NeXT magneto-optical cartridges looks quite good (and half the cost of any competitor that I know of. These are also front loading like the cassettes and would seem susceptible to similar kinds of juke box implementations. Are there any?? Dick Dick Karpinski Manager of Minicomputer Services, UCSF Computer Center Domain: dick@cca.ucsf.edu (415) 476-4529 (11-7) BITNET: dick@ucsfcca or dick@ucsfvm (415) 658-6803 (Home) USPS: U-76 UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143-0704 (415) 658-3797 (ans)