Storage technology in movie Eraser (1996)
How real was this?
The movie is Eraser (1996) and it has a secure filevault in a corporate highrise building with robotic silos containing data on mini CD-ROMs.
I know there is a company called StorageTek, but they manufactured robotic tape silos.
I've seen something like that in pharmacies or vending machines where a robotic arm fetches the item purchased and drops it in a bay for retrieval.
There used to be mechanic CD jukeboxes in beer bars that used a similar construction to get the CD for playback.
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I'm not sure about the robotic archives in the transparent silo. They might be stored on tape cartridges. I thought that they were CD caddies.
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=jxt5A0KJ9nw
The user, however, copies the data on writable mini CD discs. That part must've been a movie prop.
When I was younger, jukeboxes had actual vinyl records that would drop into place with a mechanical arm and play.
HP Storever tape library
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=FYfrC2kYbDc
StorageTek
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=IDgXa0ioVTs
That movie was based on something like this. Of course, the transparent panels in the silos were a movie prop. There's no need to see the arm move in a spectacular whoosh every time data is retrieved.
Using some GNU/Linux to run it now: "The LMU (library management unit) which controls it runs off a 80386SX motherboard running VRTX - a very early version of a realtime Linux operating system which is/was used to control the Hubble Space Telescope."
This tape library silo is from the same year as the movie.
Assembling a storage tape silo library in a data center.
It's StorageTek. It was a real-world system, they used tape cartridges in a silo.
https://trisquel.info/files/storagetek_eraser_1996.jpg
