this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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The main machines at work still do upgrades via tapes. The main program can communicate with lots of online services, but it still updates via tape. Probably too hard to spend the time to figure out how to implement OTA upgrades, since it was first created back in the 80s.
But the 512KB was more of a vague gesture towards the limitations back then. We had a separate floppy drive, with which I would load up a big black rectangle that had 1-5 very basic games on it. There's something special about locking down the disk which you can't get even with its smaller successor...
Comparing audio cassettes to modern high-density tape storage is pretty much the same comparison as an 8-bit computer with a modern 64-bit server, or, say, a hamster with a human.
Basically the same thing, but the differences are somewhat notable.