The Computer Chronicles - Data Storage Solutions (1998)

[@DigiFootageFX]

That online backup storage service was way ahead of its time. I bet they went out of business over the years, but nowadays there are dozens of companies doing exactly that same service and making a fortune. Sometimes timing in business is even more important than the idea itself.

[@rustynail6819]

100% agree. They were 12 years ahead of where storage and data encryption was back in 1998. They were basically the first "cloud storage" service and the were bought out by StorageTec who was then acquired by Oracle.

[@srrobinson07]

They were actually acquired by storage tech corp the year before this video aired. Which was eventually bought by Sun Microsystems. While there are a lot of backup solutions available these guys bring to mind the cloud storage company backblaze.

[@drygnfyre]

Yeah, pretty incredible how slick and simple the service appeared to be in 1998. It was basically Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive, but way ahead of its time. It probably would have done better if broadband was more of a thing in 1998 (it existed but was still in its early days). Otherwise, the UI looks basically identical to how most cloud services work today.

[@MattExzy]

Cloud storage makes sense today - however in the late 90s, many people were still on 33k modems and upload speeds were even more terrible. Definitely bad timing.

[@medes5597]

​@@MattExzythey were pretty popular with graphics houses at the time. I would assume they were paying for faster connections to make it worth it.

[@seanlookalike]

I just love these old shows

[@RWL2012]

1998 is relatively "new" for this one! It started in the mid-80s

[@vokost]

Stewart effectively spotted the future - tablet computers - with his Pick of the Week at 24:25 !

[@DigiFootageFX]

Also the online backup service was two decades ahead of its time. They probably went out of business by now, but as we know there's dozens of companies doing that exact same backup storage service nowadays and very successfully.

[@NightLinks]

We all know it now as "The Cloud".

[@schutz85]

@@NightLinks Is it just me or is calling datacenters "the cloud" irritating? Probably just me.

[@ChatGPT1111]

Actually Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick did that with the movie 2001 made in 1967 (filmed in 1966). There are several tablet computers streaming broadcast TV hundreds of millions of miles away featured in that movie.

[@McVaio]

Turns out no one's using them still to this day. It's all smartphones.

[@globalcommerce7654]

I was a big SparQ user but they had an extremely high failure rate I can't remember if it was the drive or media but I know in my experience with 6mo you had a 40-50% chance of a failure They were on fire sale when they went out of business I bought quite a few but I think they all failed eventually

[@timlaunyc]

My syquest disks died often. And I opted to get these rather than Zip drives. Of course all that went out the window with CDR\W, and ultimately flash.

[@floydjohnson7888]

One of the jokes of that time was, "Removing random files won't make your laptop lighter."

[@jorgem50]

I remember in 1997 watching somewhere on tv about the future of music. In the report they mentioned how records and cassettes would end up being the thing of the past and how music would be stored on a small chip the size of a mailing stamp and all stereos would be able to play that chip.

[@DavidTrejo]

Our interpreted futures based on the conceptual limitations of the day are always a treat to revisit.

[@stefanscherbik2088]

I wonder if Stewart was a gamer, or was he just interested in games in his capacity as a technology reporter? He recognized Quake right away just by looking at it (and didn't confuse it with Doom or Wolfenstein 3D or anything), and in another episode he was talking about playing Tomb Raider.

[@goodiesguy]

I don't know if he was a gamer. Probably just a bloody good host and reporter, making sure to know what he is discussing and being excited about new technology developments.

[@danielwebofrito2]

I think he was. At least in another episode he said he was enjoying a point-and-click Windows 3.1 game.

[@skwealbaag8776]

@@peterjszerszen proof?

[@MrTony0113]

@@skwealbaag8776 I think he was just joking... not that many 80 year olds can play fortnite

[@loganmacgyver2625]

i think he was a geek even off screen

[@mohdwahidi]

We are living the future they have discussed in the series. All the respects to the all the person behinds it.

[@jesuszamora6949]

Storage DOES seem to be a bit of a hamster wheel, really. The more you need, the more you get. The more you get, the bigger the programs and files. The bigger the programs and files, the more you need.

[@jesuszamora6949]

@DOSboi Aidan That's not even counting how goddamn huge Windows 11 is compared to XP.

[@jesuszamora6949]

@DOSboi Aidan Oh, no doubt. The limits of old hardware might have been a pain in the ass, but they forced developers to rein in the bloat and write elegant programs. Now, you only get that if you're running a Linux distro targeted at more limited hardware.

[@ericwood3709]

9:05 Cloud backup :D

[@Schroefdoppie]

"We have Terrabytes of storage.."

[@SpiDey1500]

@@Schroefdoppie yeah, I have terabytes, too. 🙃😅

[@paulgascoigne5343]

In 1998 with dial-up working on a 56kbps modem running optimally at 7kb/s it would take 4 hours to download 100mb or 40 hours for a gigabyte!

[@TheyRiseBand]

In 1998, my neighborhood was one of the first in the city to get cable modem service. It was incredible, switching from 56k. I think it ran asymmetrically at 3 mbps / 384 kbps. In that era, the Internet was built for dial-up, so it was incredibly fast and always on - something you would previously pay big money for, in a leased line like T1.

[@nucflashevent]

Makes me so nostalgic lol, "with applications routinely asking for 40, 50 or more MEGABYTES..." I still play Civilization III (never really clicked with any of the later entries in the series) and I just installed a huge, ongoing expansion scenario that ALL BY ITSELF took around 3-4 GIGABYTES of space (and I think the CivIII app and files themselves take like 1.5 gigs.)

[@paulloweuk]

40 or 50mb LOL those were the days.

[@perrybarton]

The MacPPP dialog box in this version of the intro sure brings back nerdy memories. 🤓

[@christineayres5339]

Cloud storage in 98 Computer Chronicles predict the future

[@davidt8087]

I feel bad for these guys. They were ahead of their time SO MUCH that they failed. If they started just a couple years later or somehow stuck around they’d be the BIGGEST out now or bought out by Google or something

[@tb8865]

Babylon 5 and Quake! Really takes you back, man.

[@TomiTapio]

"parallel port spark drive" gonna be soo slow

[@CantankerousDave]

I had a parallel Zip drive (still in a box downstairs). It was painful to use.

[@oubrioko]

6:57 *_Anybody's Girl_* - Hmm . . . Might wanna check that one out.

[@zeroeffortmemes]

😉

[@captainsemicolon]

Interesting that ZAuction is advertised at the start of this program. Having never heard of it, I assumed it would have been bought and absorbed into eBay or something, but nope. Went out of business in 1999, just a year after this program.

[@jessihawkins9116]

ZAuction is eBay

[@captainsemicolon]

?

[@nitramluap]

The interesting thing about this is that it shows that pretty much everything we currently use today will be obsolete in 20 years.

[@fideasu3690]

Well, despite the prophecy at the end, keyboard and mouse are still far from being obsolete. Sure, for web browsing and multimedia many people switched completely to mobile devices (phones, tablets...), but I don't see the most of office workers being ready to get rid of their keyboard and mouse (especially keyboard).

[@SanctusBacchus]

Wrong.

[@masterbeuner8964]

2024 WinRAR still free

[@brandonnaidu8292]

It's technically not free you just can keep using. It's part of how the company does business.. Google it... Pretty interesting... I used to think it was free too

[@AshtonCoolman]

That SparQ Drive is pretty dope for the time. If it wasn't stupid expensive it would have been a great stop-gap until big USB storage drives hit the market.

[@straightpipediesel]

They were absolute garbage. SparQ, SyJet, and Iomega Jaz were all the same stupid idea: take a hard drive and make the platters removable. There's a reason why hard drives are permanently sealed and why taking the lid off of it ruins them. They had a huge failure rate, the disks and drives would last months. By August 1998, the year this was filmed, SyQuest ran out of money, shut down, and went bankrupt.

[@Daehawk]

40 or 50 megs?? Who has that space free??? 13:13 thats my old case! A InWin Q500 Super tower. About 30 lbs empty.

[@ukranaut]

08:00 he needed this to store Bilbo's documents

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

The ZIP drive was soooo much space. Couldn’t afford it, but, it was big for the short time it existed.

[@liluglymane5676]

Those zip drives even had fame within hip hop producers who use mpc drum machines

[@arifinbali3757]

My first PC was pentium 200mmx with 1.5GB hard drive, it got bad sectors after 1 year of use.

[@hansc8433]

Why did people say “That’s correct” all the time? I noticed that in other episodes as well.. Why not just answer with “Yes” or “Indeed”? Is that still the normal way of responding to questions? Or considered old-fashioned by now? (EN is not my first language)..

[@jwr2904]

It's just a way of using something different

[@sergheiadrian]

In the end only the tape drive and optical disks survived.

[@RonJohn63]

Eh? Spinning disks are definitely still around.

[@RonJohn63]

And optical disks are all but gone.

[@chubbycatfish4573]

I still use MO disks. I might be the only person in North America that does, though.

[@Kaziklu]

lol Word Documents taking up a lot of hard drive space..

[@Kaziklu]

@SteelRodent That was the point of the comment. Sadly people are so quick to try to be "right" or prove a point they miss the joke. Word Documents don't generally take up a lot of hard drive space today in the era of multi terabyte hard drives.

[@AcornElectron]

My cat holds more data than these drives.

[@ChatGPT1111]

The cable coming out of that “tablet” looks like it could hold up the Golden Gate Bridge.

[@DanielBurapavong]

I have quite the collection of obsolete Iomega Zip disks. A whopping 100 MB each.

[@ezydenias8505]

what has a raccoon to do with connections?

[@oldtwins]

Interesting how solid state devices simply got cheap enough to be the portable solution in itself. Now you can get a 32gb usb stick for less than 10 bucks. If you warped back into this episode and made this prediction you'd be accused of witchcraft or ridiculed with insults.

[@paulgascoigne5343]

oldtwins I'm just looking at my mobile phone with a 32gb sd card, which is the size of my little finger nail. Then looking at the 8mb compact flash and the doomed 40mb mini-zip disc.. Amazing.

[@spacemonkey9257]

My phone has a 128 gb sd card and 64 gb onboard storage

[@BlownMacTruck]

“Witchcraft”? Uh no you wouldn’t. This show was on the air for more than a decade at this point so the idea that tech got better over time was hardly surprising to them.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@@BlownMacTruck Really? So if you were handed a dime sized device that holds more storage and computing power than every single device on this planet by an order of magnitude of 10000x, you'd just nod your head and say "oh ok i knew that was coming" ?

[@BlownMacTruck]

@@oldtwinsna8347 Yeah. Who doesn’t think that will happen? It happened in the past. It happened throughout the run of this show. The speed of tech is obvious and it’s clear it shows no signs of abating. It would be weirder to NOT think this would happen.

[@christineayres5339]

PL 300 the first Ipad before Apple perfected the technology

[@JonnyInfinite]

14:18 Babylon 5

[@magicpixeltree]

awesome

[@blob5907]

8:48 tharah

[@reygood1]

Wow! That was the grandfather of Wacom Cintiq.

[@rezn66]

mag NEATO drives!

[@AbdiPianoChannel]

If you compress your 2 TB HDD into to 2MB, run away coz your computer becomes blackhole.

[@dennisdoherty1133]

We need inside out compression and piper net

[@mattdavenport533]

Now we have cloud storage! And tablets and chromebooks

[@leonjones7120]

Over time i have seen a ratio that stands all my PC I have ever used so far. I have never had hard drive data more than 1/3 its capacity ! This is since 1990.

[@yaosio]

Oh snap, 50 megabytes!?

[@chukchee]

It doesnt seem to be efficient.......you have to hold the pad on your legs...

[@maynnemillares]

He was a visionary, he mentioned it being a first-generation device.

[@mgatelabs]

7 megabytes, my god

[@tedbell4416]

I know I know it's huge

[@fightingquads9198]

....."with routine application requesting 40, 50, or more megabytes of your storage"......LOL........

[@umageddon]

Fighting Quads “Look at me today with my superior storage options!!I can EASILY get 128gigs for a usb drive for like $15 omg i am a storage god!!! These people are primitive idiots!!!!”

[@ChatGPT1111]

umageddon Here in February 2020, your ancient January 2020 technology is a joke. I scoff at your archaic comparisons.

[@chloedevereaux1801]

40 or 50 MBs.... paaahaaaahaaaaaaaa....

[@SchweinchenHorst]

I hope they dont use xerox for digitizen the Library 😂

[@xXxJustCallMeM]

40 to 50 gb nowadays. lol

[@infinitecanadian]

Now California Graphics touts that it is woman-owned, as if that made any difference at all. Oh, what a world...

[@medes5597]

It's been shown it makes a difference with consumers. They trust a female run company more, they associate it with more care and respect than a male run company. Sort of like how red pills work better than any other colour. It doesn't matter in the cold hard facts but in terms of how actual people respond? It does.

[@tedbell4416]

​@@medes5597baloney

[@dommidavros2211]

Hmm a 1gb cartridge??? Looks pretty pointless to me when you could just buy a 2TB solid state drive which is SMALLER AND FASTER!! 😡 I don't get why the Hell these guys would bother with such obsolete technology ffs!😒😡

[@Tristinfate]

I would love to be back in 1998 and show them my smart phone with 2TB of storage.

[@shanebowers2800]

Whoever dude is asking questions really should shutup A LOT more often