Re: Wipe Swap File

17 Dec 2003

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At 11:23 AM 1/20/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
...
At 3:38 PM 1/20/96, Dr. Dimitri Vulis wrote:
...
tallpaul@pipeline.com (tallpaul) writes:
Interestingly, we wrote almost identical responses to Dmitri, although 
admittedly you won the "time race."

Is it:
1.  "Great minds run on the same path"?
or
2.  "Fools think alike"   <G>
...
3. A time-varying field is preferred. Bulk erasers work this way, by
plugging into an a.c. socket and generating a time-varying field. And even
these are getting harder to use to erase video tapes, for example, due to
the high coercivity of modern media. Most folks I know no longer even try
to bulk erase tapes.
Video tapes, yes.  Audio cassette tapes, maybe.

However, they should still be useful for floppies, for two reasons:

1.  Distance to the media is far smaller than to the average distance to the 
inside of a videotape cartridge.  (floppy cases are thinner.)

2.  The volume of material to be erased is FAR smaller than a typical 
videotape cartridge.  The middle of the tape of a 1/2" wide videotape spool is 
self-shielded by at least 1/4" of videotape; a 3.5" floppy disk is shielded 
only by distance.  (actually, the sliding doo-hickey over 3.5" floppies 
probably acts as a shield, too.

jim bell

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