Last updated A D/CAS, aka "streamer" cassette, for data storage, adapted from the audio Compact Cassette format
D/CAS (Data/CASsette), also known as a streamer cassette, is a now-obsolete data backup technology that used an upgraded version of the common audio cassette tape and a specialized tape drive derived from an audio tape transport. Holding anywhere from 200 KB to 600 MB (in 1990), it was superseded by newer data backup formats such as Travan, QIC, DDS, and LTO.
Streamer cassettes look almost like a standard audio cassette, with the addition of a notch about one quarter inch wide and deep, situated slightly off-center at the top edge of the cassette. They also have a reusable write-protect tab on one side of the top edge, with the other side having either only an open rectangular hole, or no hole at all. Data was recorded across four tracks in a serpentine manner across the whole width of the tape, much like newer formats such as QIC or Travan, making them single-sided.
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.
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic tape could with relative ease record and playback audio, visual, and binary computer data.
A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic-tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability.
VHS is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes invented in 1976 by the Victor Company of Japan and was the competitor to the ill-fated Sony Betamax system.
DV refers to a family of codecs and tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly associated with the transition from analog to digital desktop video production, and also with several enduring "prosumer" camera designs such as the Sony VX-1000. DV is sometimes referred to as MiniDV, which was the most popular tape format using a DV codec during this time.
The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips and released in August 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either containing content as a prerecorded cassette (Musicassette), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed—for example the Microcassette—the generic term cassette tape is normally used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity.
Digital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a Compact Cassette, using 3.81 mm / 0.15" magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. The recording is digital rather than analog. DAT can record at sampling rates equal to, as well as higher and lower than a CD at 16 bits quantization. If a comparable digital source is copied without returning to the analogue domain, then the DAT will produce an exact clone, unlike other digital media such as Digital Compact Cassette or non-Hi-MD MiniDisc, both of which use a lossy data-reduction system.
The 8-track tape is a magnetic-tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, which pre-dated the 8-track system, surpassed it in popularity for pre-recorded music.
The Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) is a magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita Electric in late 1992 and marketed as the successor to the standard analog Compact Cassette. It was also a direct competitor to Sony's MiniDisc (MD), but neither format toppled the then-ubiquitous analog cassette despite their technical superiority, and DCC was discontinued in October 1996.
Elcaset was a short-lived audio format jointly developed by Sony, Panasonic, and Teac in 1976, building on an idea introduced 20 years earlier in the RCA tape cartridge.
The Commodore 1530 (C2N) Datasette, later also Datassette, is Commodore's dedicated magnetic-tape data storage device. Using compact cassettes as the storage medium, it provides inexpensive storage to Commodore's 8-bit computers, including the PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64. A physically similar model, Commodore 1531, was made for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 series computers.
Digital Data Storage (DDS) is a computer data storage technology that is based upon the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) format that was developed during the 1980s. DDS is primarily intended for use as off-line storage, especially for generating backup copies of working data.
Quarter inch cartridge tape is a magnetic tape data storage format introduced by 3M in 1972, with derivatives still in use as of 2016. QIC comes in a rugged enclosed package of aluminum and plastic that holds two tape reels driven by a single belt in direct contact with the tape. The tape was originally 1⁄4 inch (6.35 mm) wide and anywhere from 300 to 1,500 feet long. Data is written linearly along the length of the tape in one track, or written "serpentine", 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 neighbor. Since its introduction, it has been widely used, and many variations exist. There is a QIC trade association that publishes QIC standards which include interfaces and logical formats. To a very large extent it was the efficiency and openness of this organization which encouraged hardware and software developers to use this type of drive and media.
Travan is an 8 mm magnetic tape cartridge design developed by the 3M company, used for the storage of data in computer backups and mass storage. Over time, subsequent versions of Travan cartridges and drives have been developed that provide greater data capacity, while retaining the standard 8 mm width and 750' length. Travan is standardized under the QIC body. HP Colorado, Iomega DittoMax and AIWA Bolt are proprietary versions of the Travan format.
D-VHS is a digital video recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for "Data", but JVC renamed the format as "Digital VHS". Released in December of 1997, it uses the same physical cassette format and recording mechanism as S-VHS, but requires higher-quality and more expensive tapes and is capable of recording and displaying both standard-definition and high-definition content. The content data format is in MPEG transport stream, the same data format used for most digital television applications. It used MPEG-2 encoding and was standarized as IEC 60774-5.
The Ditto drive series was a proprietary magnetic tape data storage system released by Iomega during the 1990s. It was marketed as a backup device for personal computers.
D-3 is an uncompressed composite digital video videocassette format invented at NHK and introduced commercially by Panasonic. It was launched in 1991 to compete with Ampex's D-2.
NT is a digital memo recording system introduced by Sony in 1992, sometimes marketed under the name Scoopman.
Digital audio cassette formats introduced to the professional audio and consumer markets:
Magnetic-tape data storage is a system for storing digital information on magnetic tape using digital recording.
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