Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 01/83 - checked

January 1983

Photography. Now, there's a subject to contemplate. Like playing a guitar, it is something that is easy to do in a simple fashion, but it is almost impossible to become a master.

The world and his uncle has spent many joyous hours taking full-colour photographs of Aunt Ethel's knees (neatly exorcising thereby the part of Aunt Ethel that has always affronted a delicate set of eardrums). Pocket Instamatics can be seen distorting the careful tailoring of every other suit seen walking down Oxford Street. The other every-other-suit is only not being distorted because the Instamatic is in someone's hand, taking a glorious, full colour shot of the top half of the right-hand corner of Selfridges.

Yet, if it is done properly, photography can capture a mood or emotion - a nuance of the pain or happiness felt by a subject, an insight into the horror of war and the joy of laughter. A master with a camera can see and capture what most of us miss until the photograph gave us the time and space to observe.

So many things can be photographed it is hard to know where to start sometimes. Should the camera be pointed at people - old people that smile, young ladies that work the Page 3 circuit - or should it be pointed at the inanimate things of our world: cars, mountains, computers, telephones, data, plates of chips or. . ?

Data?

Yes, indeed, why not photograph data? In fact it is becoming eminently sensible to photograph data instead of carrying out all this silly nonsense about encoding it in magnetic flux.

In a few years time, and almost certainly before the end of this decade, it is reckoned that the majority of data storage in small systems will be photographic rather than magnetic. Who says so? Well, actually it's a Mr Bill Martin, who works for Control Data, planning that company's product and marketing strategy in storage peripherals. As an important sideline, of course, this means observing what IBM gets up to.

He has to watch this particular company because of its pre-eminent position in the computer business. Where IBM leads the others have to follow, and be damned quick about it. In fact they usually try to out-guess the Blue Giant, at least in terms of the general outline or configuration of an upcoming product.

This means that Bill Martin is well aware of not only the IBM marketplace, but also the technologies involved in all aspects of data storage. He is a whiz at magnetic storage techniques such as disks and tapes, and fully understands their advantages and disadvantages. He is also a reasonable whiz at photography and its implications.

To be fair, the photography in question is not the same as yer actual David Bailey (or Editor Rodwell, for that matter). No, what this particular photography refers to is the optical disc.

This has enormous potential in the small computer systems market because of its truly staggering storage potential. Its use will require a rethink on how users store their date, and on the economics of storage, vis-à-vis existing techniques. It will also bring about an important development for the large numbers of first time users that will continue to make up the majority of the personal computer market for years to come. The development is that, for the first time, they will not be able to lose their data. . . ever.

First, however, some facts. Bill Martin is predicting that by the mid to late 'eighties there will be optical disc storage systems available for small computers. He sees this marketplace being developed, quite possibly by IBM, before the mainframe market, if only because with applications like word processing and small business accounting the market itself is well defined.

The storage system will not be cheap to start with, probably around $10,000. It will appear firstly therefore on the bigger 'professional' systems. It would use a standard optical disc that is written to and read from by laser. Each of these would cost around $10.

This is where the fun starts. The capacity of each disc will be around 2,000 megabytes per side. Sounds a lot, doesn't it? Sit and think about it for a while. Modern mini-floppies pack around a megabyte per disc. A mini-winnie crams maybe 50 megabytes. Each side of an optical disc will be the equivalent of a string of 80 mini-winnies. But the disc can be turned over and the other side can be used. This means that for around $10,010, 4,000 megabytes of storage will be available.

That starts to make nonsense of current data storage economics. For example, a mini-floppy storing 1 megabyte, and costing some $500, provides 2,500 bytes of online store for each dollar spent. The optical disc, though more expensive, will provide a staggering 20,000 bytes of on-line storage per dollar spent.

The change in the economics of data storage will bring with it changes in the way that storage is used. The relative cost, and more importantly the inconvenience, of magnetic disk storage means that it is against the user's interests to be profligate with storage resources. Floppy disks are inconvenient at times, hard disks need backing up and, because of its very nature magnetic media can easily lose data.

Well, that's not entirely fair. It is not normally the magnetic media itself that loses the data, it is usually the electronic systems and software that drives them that actually perpetrates the loss. And it is the inherent complexity of these elements - either externally so that the poor user barely understands how to operate them, or internally so that he can get at least some idea - that creates the well known situation of the user who pressed the wrong button and sent all his files to the great data-dump in the sky.

With optical disc this need not, indeed will not, happen. I will now expound on the reason why.

Like many people, the first time I considered the subject of optical discs as a storage medium I fell into a classic trap. 'Ah,' said I, 'they'll be okay for archival use - excellent in fact - but as there is no erase or over-writing function, they won't get used for on line storage.'

Wrong.

They will, and the reason is quite straightforward - brute capacity. At 2,000 megabytes per side a user can be as profligate with storage as it's possible to be. Should a disc ever become full (and that would take some doing) then all the user has to do is turn it over and start again. Should that side become full, well then, just spend $10 on another one.

If you let this attitude to data storage sink in, its implications become clearer. Optical disc systems no longer are seen as being just for archival use. It matters not that you can't erase data. In fact you shouldn't want to (in most cases anyway). Even in really profligate applications like word processing, which uses up storage like it's going out of fashion, there is really no need to erase or over-write files. It is an advantage not to have to.

As Bill Martin points out, the optical disc automatically produces father/son file structures, and gives an automatic 'audit trail' of those files. Because a file cannot be erased it can never be lost or erased accidentally. Any amendment or addition to a file will just produce another, latest, version of it. The original will still exist.

This has important implications for a variety of applications, of both textual and numeric types. The daily grind of backing up files will no longer always be necessary for the back-ups will already exist. The inherent father/son structure for creating files would seem to match the requirements of the accounting/data processing areas to a tee. It would also fit many of the requirements of the word or text processing environment.

Unfortunately, the one drawback of the early use of optical discs is going to be the cost. The hardware will cost considerably more than a domestic disc player because it will have to incorporate a 'write' as well as 'read' capability. in time of course, the price will drop, and so will the price of the discs. Then the systems could prove to be unbeatable in terms of price and performance, instead of performance alone. At that time, maybe the magnetic era could come to a close.

And remember, all this refers to using optical discs in a predominantly conventional data processing manner, storing data as '1's and 'O's. Even here it would seem to stand up well against magnetic media in all but initial purchase price. But this does not include the many other tricks that optical discs are capable of - the interleaving of data and audio/visual material, for example. There just have to be thousands of applications for that trick that no one has yet thought about. Try thinking - that's what Clive Sinclair did.

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