On Thu, 2025-07-17 at 13:20 +0000, Luke Parkerson via cctalk wrote:
Hi all,
I recently got my hands on what I believe is a 9-track tape, dated
1986, which has some old survey data stored on it from a university
research project several decades ago. I'm hoping to be able to
extract the information from the tape and convert it to a more modern
data file accessible to the public, but I don't know very much about
these tapes nor do I have 9-track tape equipment.
I'm wondering if anyone who is more familiar with this technology can
tell me it's even still possible to extract this data, and if so, is
there's anyone here who can try and run the tape, or knows someone
with a working 9-track tape drive?
The frame is not in the best shape, but the tape is hopefully fine.
Here's a photo:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PrdBnIWUO4-317ZSwqvY-TD6dHr2CxC8/view?usp=…
Thanks,
Luke
Paul Pierce <prp(a)teleport.com> had 9-track and 7-track tape drives and
software to extract data and cope with errors. I don't know whether he
still has the equipment, but if he doesn't he probably knows who can do
it.