Tape drive explosion - HECnet

25 Jan 2013

Hang on it.    It's great drive and very good a reading old tapes.

A couple of years back, I had the last known copy of the UNIX Circuit Design System (aka
UCSD) - we cleaned the tape.   Shinned up the head.    We figured we had one shot at read
it.    The had to retry a bunch, but we let it go.    Damned if we got the entire tape
with out any loss.

Dennis declared them as a "very late delivery" to part of UNIX V7 and  Warren
now has those bits in TUHS archives.     

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 8:09 AM, John H. Reinhardt <johnhreinhardt at yahoo.com>
wrote:
I picked up a TSZ08 on Ebay a couple years ago.   I haven't used it lately, but it
still loads tapes successfully.   It's a horizontal 9-track drive like the TSZ07.

John H. Reinhardt

On 1/25/2013 8:00 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
TS08 - great drive, I'd love to find one used.

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 2:27 AM, Ian McLaughlin <ian at platinum.net <mailto:ian at
platinum.net>> wrote:

      We're any of the other DEC drives released in a scsi version?

      Ian

      Sent from my iPad

      On 2013-01-24, at 8:33 PM, Kari Uusim  ki
      <uusimaki at exdecfinland.org <mailto:uusimaki at exdecfinland.org>>
wrote:

...
  On 25.1.2013 0:26, Ian McLaughlin wrote:
>
> On 2013-01-24, at 2:06 AM, Kari Uusim  ki       <uusimaki at
exdecfinland.org <mailto:uusimaki at exdecfinland.org>> wrote:
...
 >
>> Is the takeup leader (the plastic ribbon which is fastened to       the
internal reel) intact? Its outer end which grabs the tape from
      the cassette is arrow-shaped. Is the "arrow" quite in order? If
      not, the takeup leader should be replaced.
...
 >
> Tape leader is fine on this drive.   The problem with this       cartridge is
the spool inside the cartridge jammed and wouldn't
      rotate causing the drive to not rewind.
...
  Ok. Cartridge failure, then. Could it have been
accidentally       dropped? I've seen several times DLT cartriges fail after
been
      dropped on the floor.
...

>> You can also read a TK50 tape with a newer DLT drive like       TZ85, TZ86
and TZ87.
...
 >
> Is this true?   According to Wikipedia      
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Linear_Tape a CompacTape I
      can only be read by a TK50 and a TK70.
...
 >
> Can anyone confirm or deny this?   I have some newer generation       DLT
drives, but none of them admit to being backwards compatible
      that far.
...

 Ian

 . 
 I'm not sure if others than DEC branded DLT drives       (TZ85,TZ86,TZ87) can
read TK50 tapes, but DEC drives sure do.
...
  Even the front of the drive has leds which indicate
which       formats the drive can handle.
...

 Like Johnny said, Wikipedia articles aren't always the complete       truth of
the topic.
...

 Regards,

 Kari

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