I never used them for backup but saw them advertised. LGR did a video on one such system. I don't think you need to mod the VCR. IIRC they wrote the data 3 times, in order to deal with dropouts and corruption. I have a lot of 3/4" U-Matic, Beta and SVHS tapes that contain data that is used by a box to decode analog signals from the digital data stored on tapes. 4 x 12 bit analog for two X + Y and then RGB color via 6 bit DAC I think. It's basically laser shows stored on video tapes! When you look at it on a monitor you can pretty much just see the data. I have videos of it on youtube but some of them got copyright strikes due to the music from the tapes. The later firewire camcorders, I think you could actually cram 8GB of data per tape if you stuff it through the firewire interface as video. When I worked at NASA I recall someone saying that the STK / IBM drive system we were using in the big libraries (Powderhorns) were actually some kind of commercial SVHS VCR rebuilt and then sold for $100K a pop. - Ethan
Hey all - just curious if anyone actually used modified VHS tape players/recorders for backing up their BBS or computer in generally back in the actual day?
I understand you can get a few GB on the tapes which would have been a huge amount in the late 80s and still useful up until at least the mid-90s..
If yes what was the setup, and how did it attach to your computer? what software was used?