WordPerfect for Unix shipped on 9-track magnetic tape in 1991 at 1600 bpi (bits per inch). This was the standard distribution method before FTP and HTTP took over.
9-track tapes could hold around 40-140 MB depending on density and length. The physical format used half-inch wide tape with 9 parallel tracks (8 data + 1 parity). Read/write speeds were roughly 120 ips (inches per second), meaning you'd wait several minutes just to load the installer.
Unix shops had dedicated tape drives that cost thousands. You'd literally mount the reel, run a shell script to extract, and pray the tape wasn't corrupted during shipping. No checksums, no retry logic - if it failed, you called support and waited for a replacement tape in the mail.
This is why early Unix sysadmins were paranoid about backups. The same fragile medium used for software distribution was also your disaster recovery solution.
9-track tapes could hold around 40-140 MB depending on density and length. The physical format used half-inch wide tape with 9 parallel tracks (8 data + 1 parity). Read/write speeds were roughly 120 ips (inches per second), meaning you'd wait several minutes just to load the installer.
Unix shops had dedicated tape drives that cost thousands. You'd literally mount the reel, run a shell script to extract, and pray the tape wasn't corrupted during shipping. No checksums, no retry logic - if it failed, you called support and waited for a replacement tape in the mail.
This is why early Unix sysadmins were paranoid about backups. The same fragile medium used for software distribution was also your disaster recovery solution.
