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from the what's-old-is-still-old-but-they-are-making-more dept.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
National Audio Co. is the only company in the U.S. that produces cassette tape. Now, as cassette tapes enjoy a resurgence in popularity, National Audio has less than a year's supply left of the stuff, The Wall Street Journal reports.
For the last 15 years, National Audio's co-owner and president Steve Stepp has been clinging to his company's dwindling supply of music-quality magnetic tape. In 2014, National Audio's South Korean supplier stopped making the material, so Stepp bought out their remaining stock before they shuttered — and has been left with a shrinking stockpile ever since.
Although the demand for tape has increased in recent years, the quality and supply has not; National Audio has long relied on outdated gear that Stepp jokes is "the finest equipment the 1960s has to offer." That's why the company — which makes cassettes for everyone from indie bands to Metallica — is planning to build the U.S.'s first high-grade tape manufacturing line in decades.
Crap! Where am I going to store my TRS-80 programs now?
Source: https://theweek.com/speedreads/735269/america-running-cassette-tape
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday November 13 2017, @09:31PM (1 child)
Yes, but the question was if they were used as flippy disks (cut a hole and use the flip side).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @08:47AM
From the Wikipedia picture, the 8 inch floppies didn't have the hole in the first place, so that wouldn't be necessary.
It does however have the index hole, so you wouldn't be able to flip it in any drive that uses the index hole. Note that this wouldn't be possible with a 5 1/4" disk either, but some home computers (e.g. Commodore) used "soft sector" formatting, which didn't use the index hole.
(The index hole is the little round hole near the center, where as the hole you talk about cutting is the write protect hole, which is the square notch on the side.