The IBM 3494 automatic tape cartridge system was installed at the Atlas Centre in February 1994. It was a linear tape robot with a lightweight hand running between two facing walls of tape cartridge shelving. Among the cartridge shelves were mouths of tape drives so that the hand, with its horizontal and vertical motions, could put any cartridge into any drive. It was integrated into the Atlas Data Store and data could be read and written from any machine with IP network connectivity to RAL, including the then current Atlas Centre services: Cray Y-MP8, IBM VM/CMS, DEC VMS, and DEC Unix farm.
The capacity of the IBM 3494 system was substantially greater than that of the existing StorageTek silos and was in the range 10-20 TB depending on the cartridge recording densities, which were increasing year by year at the time.
Photographs of the IBM 3494 are included in the 1994 newsletter article referenced from this page
