Post #2157826

2026-02-25 14:36 UTC

Today’s #RetroTech Sorting through a bag of Cassettes, found this in the mix. I noticed the notch, looked different Streamer Cassette, D/CAS, late 80s Data Storage &amp; Back Up Tape Cassette Single sided, 4 Tracks of Data up to 600 MB. Was all over by mid 90s as other options came to market @obsoletemediauk Read more at https://obsoletemedia.org/streamer-cassette/

Replies (3)

@raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie 2026-02-25 19:30

@avavsystems@mastodon.world @obsoletemediauk@mastodon.world I don't think those were ever popular. A failure from day 1. Originally only 200K! I never saw one. The earlier D/CAS was beaten by 1.2M 5.25" and 1.44 3.5" (1986). QIC/Travan/DDS for tape. The only successful single=side 4-track use for the compact cassette was home analogue recording. Tascam 144 in 1979, World's first four-track recorder based on a standard compact cassette tape. Later they did an 488 in 1991. 8 tracks on a compact cassette. Never popular.

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@fluidlogic@oldbytes.space 2026-02-25 22:26

@avavsystems@mastodon.world @obsoletemediauk@mastodon.world This is fascinating: Streamer cassettes can be used in an audio cassette deck, but the formulation of tape they contain is optimized only for full-saturation square wave digital data, resulting in audio recordings made on them having very poor audio quality and a large amount of noise and distortion. Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D/CAS I'd love to know how long it took to write 600MB to one of these. 'Serpentine' isn't helical (like video) it's "one track at a time, the drive reversing direction at the end of the tape, and each track's data written in the opposite direction to its neighbour".

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@markno@mastodon.online 2026-02-25 23:16

@avavsystems@mastodon.world ooh gosh, i actually remember them!

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