[cctalk] Re: Age of Tape Formats?

-----Original Message----- From: Zane Healy via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2023 4:35 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Cc: Zane Healy <healyzh(a)avanthar.com> Subject: [cctalk] Re: Age of Tape Formats? On Mar 7, 2023, at 5:32 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: format. 10 inch reels (1200 feet) were by far the most common but occasionallly the smaller 600 foot ones would be seen. and in rare cases (the infamous DEC TS05 comes to mind) 600' was all that they could handle. I’ll be the first to admit my question is a bit strange. Basically I’m trying to use the date that various media types were first introduced to show the oldest possible date for a bunch of media I’m trying to date. The 9-Track tapes have been inventoried as “700 6250 BPI”, and I know they’re the smaller reels. Doing some digging, it looks like 6250BPI tapes date back at least as far as 1971 with the IBM 3400 series drives, I’d thought that 6250 came about in the 80’s. Zane