[cctalk] Quality of half-inch reel tapes ?

Hello fellow list members, with regard to my dedicated interest to magnetic reel tape drives, I have been wondering what the best options one has nowadays when it comes to the operation of such drives with working reel tape. Most of us are aware of the sticky shed syndrome that, sooner or later, seem to affect every reel tape when they absorb moisture over time. To my understanding, early tape from the 60s used a different binder which is why these tapes seem to be much less prone to this syndrome than tapes from the mid 70s to the 90s. In the end, the way the tapes have been stored plays a crucial role. Then again, all those tapes from the Apollo era were stored adequately in terms of environmental conditions and they also degraded over time. If one is in the process of doing restauration of a tape drive and to perform, let's say, a demonstration of its operation, then we need working tape. But what to do here if there are less and less usable ones? I am talking about scratch tapes, and not tapes that one wants to bake to recover its content and later "let go". How about the last tapes produced from Nashua from the late 90s? Are they worth to put hands on to have reel tape media for the years to come? Back to the tapes of the early generation from the 60s: They seem to be less prone to the sticky shed syndrome than all later generations. Anybody of you has any experience regarding tape media that are worth to look out for? Chuck shared with us once that the early IBM tapes where often in good shape when he had the task to recover data from them. Those wonderful drives made by Control Data, Honeywell, DEC and Pertec (to name a few) are great examples of electro-mechanical systems and it would be great to have some working media in future for these... Cheers, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de