Tape drives were used on a lot of early computers, including the hardware that ran early Unices (e.g. 16-bit PDP-11) and which tar/gzip were written for
Huh. I wasn't aware that cassette tapes were used on the systems that PKZip ran on either.
Pretty sure DOS didn't have tape drive support ordinarily, and I wasn't aware that PKZip was widely ported to anything that wasn't DOS or a clone/derivative?
I was kind of there, but I don't feel like this is something I should necessarily have been aware of:
> apart from one diagnostic tape available from IBM, there seems never to have been any software sold on tape, and the interface was not included on the followup PC XT.
Yeah, I don't think I knew anyone with a first-gen IBM PC, rather than an XT or XT clone. Even so, it seems like even for something as niche as the personal computer was pre-1983, this seems like an extra niche bit of lore. I wouldn't be surprised if a good proportion of people who were properly there didn't have that knowledge.
But, sure, be a douche about it if it makes you feel more superior. Whatever.
> An IBM PC with just an external cassette recorder for storage could only use the built-in ROM BASIC as its operating system, which supported cassette operations. IBM PC DOS had no support for cassette tape,
So, are you saying that PKZip supported running on the pre-XT ROM BASIC OS, as well as PC-DOS/MS-DOS?
> But, sure, be a douche about it if it makes you feel more superior. Whatever.
No, but don't try to assert conjecture as facts. "Whatever"
> So, are you saying that PKZip supported running on the pre-XT ROM BASIC OS, as well as PC-DOS/MS-DOS?
Now you're being a douche, no? I said that the hardware had cassette tape access.
The IBM PC, and PCjr both has the hardware to access tape drives. And yes you could access the cassette tape routines, INT15, 0/1/2/3 ( https://stanislavs.org/helppc/int_15.html ) through DOS, though as you allude to, there was little need to do so.
> No, but don't try to assert conjecture as facts.
I hedged with "I wasn't aware", "pretty sure", "ordinarily", and ended with a question mark. I don't know how I could have been more guarded in expressing my recollection as non-authoritative. OK, maybe "pretty sure" was a bit on the strong side. sigh Sorry for that.
> I said that the hardware had cassette tape access.
I thought your point was that IBM cassette drives, unlike the tape systems I mentioned, "were used on contemporary machines that PKZIP ran on."
If your intended meaning was something other than "original IBM PCs running ROM BASIC OS so they could access an IBM Cassette tape was a supported platform by PKZIP", then I apologise for not being smart enough to make whatever leaps of logic were required to understand what your actual point was.
