[cctalk] Re: Age of Tape Formats?

On 3/8/23 22:23, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: The Univac 3 had nothing but Uniservo 3 tape drives, and continually did things between drives in most installations.  I read that most job steps consisted of putting the OS and other stuff on a tape prior to doing something, then preparing another drive with the next step and a copy of the OS. So any Uniservo U3 tape could have the OS and the job data on it. None should be taken to have only data. And most operations programmed variants, so different installations tapes would have differ flavors of the OS to suit their styles and needs. Not many had disk drives from what I saw, certainly none had Disk OS.  Some probably didn't run the software from the tape drives, but the tape was the reason for the movies both fiction, bad TV and real machine rooms in that era having so many drives. I don't think the U3 had metalic tape, but won't swear.  Didn't really get a chance to look at the tape  when i had access to the Univac 3. My web page archived, and referenced by Wikipedia.  Photos taken when we had a Univac 3. Bill Donzelli may have tapes and residue from the system. Thanks Jim https://web.archive.org/web/20050901062918/http://jwstephens.com/univac3/pa…