nanog mailing list archives
Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network
From: Barry Shein <bzs () world std com>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:22:50 -0400
On September 20, 2011 at 02:00 henry () AegisInfoSys com (Henry Yen) wrote:
A few (dozen) years ago, I was treated to a interesting demonstration where a coworker poured an oily fluid containing tiny metallic flakes on a patch of tape. The "bits" on the tape could be clearly seen by the naked eye, and could be decoded (ever so slowly!) using a magnifying glass.
Magnetic Tape Developer, you can still buy it (see link below). I remember playing with the stuff back in the days when punch cards were still your friend. I suppose it wouldn't be that hard to make your own but I think the liquid was a fast-drying light solvent or CFC, not oily, so it'd dry, you could read it, and then shake/wipe/dust it off. It was supposedly handy for recovering physically mangled tapes, it wasn't that rare for a tape to just get jammed in a drive and get so crumpled it wouldn't go thru a drive any more and you didn't have a backup tho usually at that point you dug out the original punch cards and re-created the data set or whatever, had the data re-keyed (that means punched back onto punchcards, or even key-to-tape, from its pencil+paper source) because using tape developer would be too expensive in terms of people-hours. Or you just applied to law school and hoped for the best. http://www.cardserv.asia/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21&Itemid=10 or http://tinyurl.com/6kak4o7 -b
Current thread:
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network, (continued)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Valdis . Kletnieks (Sep 19)
- old media (was: wannabe isp) Randy Bush (Sep 19)
- Re: old media Roy (Sep 19)
- Re: old media (was: wannabe isp) Christopher Morrow (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Joel jaeggli (Sep 19)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Barton F Bruce (Sep 19)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Henry Yen (Sep 19)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Randy Bush (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Michael Painter (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Chris Adams (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Barry Shein (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network bmanning (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Robert Bonomi (Sep 20)
- RE: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Jamie Bowden (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Jens Link (Sep 27)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Jon Lewis (Sep 20)
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- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Dorn Hetzel (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Jon Lewis (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Dorn Hetzel (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Charles N Wyble (Sep 20)
- Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network Owen DeLong (Sep 20)