12 Dec
2014
12 Dec
'14
9:04 p.m.
On 12/12/2014 09:41 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
This is a bog-standard 1600 PE density 9 track tape on a
10.5" reel.
So no surprises in the physical format. Just some
screwball controller programming.
OK, that narrows things down QUITE a bit. I
worked with
some Exabyte
drives and others that had a lot of constraints on what you
could do,
and you could do some interesting things. I think you could
write
zero-length blocks, and they would show up just like that when
read. Clearly on 9-track, there SHOULD BE no such thing as a
zero-length block, but I suppose some drives could actually
write
such a thing at 1600. A preamble, CRC, LRCC and postamble, with
no data. But, that OUGHT to be an illegal command.
Jon