>Have you seen any tape drives lately?

Each of the PDP/VAX boxes (see below) had one, and I remember how near impossible it was to ride a bicycle while carrying one of the tapes. Theoretically the hand-through-the-reel was supposed to do it, but it hurt the wrist awfully. Should have got some messenger bag, but I carried tapes like that only twice, so why bother. The job got me enough money to buy an Atari with a Motorola 68000 processor, and each of the tape units ran on that same processor. But that was 1986-89.

In 1991 I saw a PC with a Xenix on it and it had those cassette units, which could load a few hundred megabytes per tape - which was huge at the time - and daily backup took half an hour. The cassettes had a metal base so they wouldn't warp, because by the end of the process they were so hot I wonder how the magnetic particles ever stayed oriented properly.

The last tape storage I saw was my old tape recorder, which I used for the ZX Spectrum before I got a cassette recorder. Saw it... and threw it into the dumpster.

>Do you think that I miss them?

If you do, some target practice will improve your aim.

>Things change. They are changing as we say they won't change.

Yes and no. On my first computer job, we had three PDPs with about 20-30 terminals each. Then a VAX instead of the bigger PDP. Then six years later the VAX was sold at half the price its AC unit made. It was all replaced with PCs and local network. Now it's back to dumb terminals, only they call it a cloud.