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This is a very rare 1974 IBM 3850 Mass Storage System (MSS) Cartridge. In the 1960s, IBM engineers began development of a mass storage system based on magnetic cartridges, incased in a honey combed machine with a robotic arm to search for and retrieve the cartridge. The secret name for this machine was called “Comanche”. Each tape cartridge could hold 202 cylinders in the 3330 disk format. In varying models, the cartridge could hold 35 to 472 billion bytes. By design, the robotic arm would search the honey comb box for desired cartridge, extract it and read the tape to disk (tape was slow, but a perfect staging media and disk was very fast). Note too, that 3330 disk could also be written / backed up to the cartridge and disk space recovered or freed. In 1974 the first IBM 3850 system was offered and quickly purchased by government and corporate companies. Cartridge size is 2” in diameter, 3.5” long and has 770 inches of tape. This rare and seldom found original 3850 cartridge still has the serial number and unknown magnetic contents. Most all of the cartridges were destroyed (proprietary information) and the few salvaged had the serial number cut off. If you are a collector of IBM computer memorabilia, this will be a highlight to any museum or private collection.
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