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Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 5
The QIC tape format brought tape backups into the small machines. Prior to that you had the large tape transports you see in old movies with 10" reels of 1/2" tape. These were just extension of the reel-reel design with rather sophisticated tape handling mechanisms for high-speed movement and extreme acceleration movements - using air-bearings and vacuum chambers. They were not cheap, but disk drives and their removable packs were very expensive too.
Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 2, Recording and Playback Heads A recording head is a horseshoe magnet taken to the extreme. The difference is that the open end of a recording head is extremely small. The easiest way to understand a very basic recording head is take a ring of metal, and cut a very small slot through it. Then we wrap some turns of wire around this ring on the side opposite the slot. Connect the wire it to an electron source, we will have a magnet with the magnetic field focused at that very small gap opposite the coil of wire.
Bill Vermillion's Tape Articles-Part 2, Recording and Playback Heads A recording head is a horseshoe magnet taken to the extreme. The difference is that the open end of a recording head is extremely small. The easiest way to understand a very basic recording head is take a ring of metal, and cut a very small slot through it. Then we wrap some turns of wire around this ring on the side opposite the slot. Connect the wire it to an electron source, we will have a magnet with the magnetic field focused at that very small gap opposite the coil of wire.
