Video Backup System: connect a VCR to your Amiga to backup data

Engineer Hugo Lyppens designed a very unique method in the early 90’s to make backups of your Amiga data on VHS tapes, it was cheap, unique and reliable. The Video Backup System Amiga (VBS) helped you to connect a VCR to your Commodore Amiga computer and turns it into an extremely reliable and affordable backup device. The package consisted of easy-to-use backup software, a hardware interface and all required cables. This innovative product of the early 90’s backs up your hard disk safely and provides a fantastic alternative to a tape streamer! It also enables you to store a collection of hundreds of floppy disks on a single video cassette. VBS stores the data on video tape using a black and white video signal. Each scanline contains a number of data bits, which are represented as short horizontal lines. To deal with potential data losses because of noise or drop-outs on the video tape, the product relies on a highly sophisticated software implementation of the Reed-Solomon error-correcting code. In order to ensure that even a 14MHz Motorola 68020 CPU could handle the data flow to and from the VCR in real time. The VBS system can be considered the grandfather of external USB hardrives.

news source: GenerationAmiga / image source: Pixabay

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