Old Control Data Tape Drives

Billy Pettit bpettitx at comcast.net
Fri May 8 22:51:22 CDT 2015


Chuck Guzis wrote:

Really great (7 track) drives; substantially over-engineered as compared 
to, say, a 65x drive.  The 604 wasn't quite as fast as the look=alike 
607, but nothing to sneeze at.  If you've got  160A, 3000-series or 
6000-series machine (and associated controller), it'd be a really great 
drive to have.

--Chuck
____________________________________________________________

These were great tape drives.  The 604 was 75ips versus 150ips for the 607.  Both drives were 200/556/800 bpi 7 track units.

The weight was a killer.  But they were extremely reliable, easy to work on and easy to interface.  Al has manuals on them (I know because I loaned them to him) and I have a lot spare parts if someone wanted to try to get them working.

These would be a good choice for recovering old 7 track tapes.  They used vacuum tensioning columns and vacuum capstans.  So very little contact with the magnetic slurry side of the tape.

Billy Pettit


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