Group coded recording

In computer science, group coded recording or group code recording (GCR) refers to several distinct but related encoding methods for magnetic media. The first, used in 6250 cpi magnetic tape since 1973, is an error-correcting code combined with a run length limited (RLL) encoding scheme. The others are different mainframe hard disk as well as floppy disk encoding methods used in some microcomputers until the late 1980s.

Group coded recording was first used for magnetic tape data storage on 9-track reel-to-reel tape. The term was coined during the development of the IBM 3420 Model 4/6/8 Magnetic Tape Unit and the corresponding 3803 Model 2 Tape Control Unit, both introduced in 1973.IBM referred to the error correcting code itself as "group coded recording". However, GCR has come to refer to the recording format of 6250 cpi tape as a whole, and later to formats which use similar RLL codes without the error correction code.

In order to reliably read and write to magnetic tape, several constraints on the signal to be written must be followed. The first is that two adjacent flux reversals must be separated by a certain distance on the media. The second is that there must be a flux reversal often enough to keep the reader's clock in phase with the written signal; that is, the signal must be self-clocking. Prior to 6250 cpi tapes, 1600 cpi tapes satisfied these constraints using a technique called phase encoding, which was only 50% efficient. For 6250 GCR tapes, a (0,2) RLL code is used. This code requires five bits to be written for every four bits of data. The code is structured so that no more than two zero bits (which are represented by lack of a flux reversal) can occur in a row, either within a code or between codes, no matter what the data was. This RLL code is applied independently to the data going to each of the nine tracks.

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