19 Jul
2006
19 Jul
'06
5:09 p.m.
jim stephens wrote:
Jules Richardson wrote:
They're branded as Inmac Plus, then just 'lifetime computer tape, 6250bpi'. No
other details on the front other than the scale on the clear window of the shell.
On the back there's a label: "A4L0J0814A2 43" (which doesn't mean
anything
according to google, at least). By my estimate the length's actually 2200
feet, assuming that the scale does indeed work in feet!
* well, near as I can tell. The scale on the reel goes from zero to
2000 in increments of 400 and is some way over the 2000 mark; I'm
assuming it's feet! (did anyone ever sell magtape > 2000ft that
*wasn't* 2400ft in length?)
thanks
3600' reels. but I don't recall a scale that actually showed the amount
of tape on any of the reels like you describe. can you describe them more? Scotch
brand? If they are so old that they predate that
These were used with a Sun 3E VME crate [1], so would have dated from anywhere
between the mid-80's and the machine's retirement (early 90's). The
drive's a
standard enough 9 track front-loading vacuum unit.
[1] Actually a pretty cool box. Cabinet with dual VME racks - the front one
houses the standard CPU and related boards, whilst the back one is full of
image processing hardware. PSUs live in the middle, with the hard drives
(one's SMD I believe, the other's SCSI) at the top. It was made by
ContextVision (who are still trading), and owned by Shell - some of the used
tapes with it hint that it was used for analysing seismic image data from
oilfields. I grabbed the tapes + tape drive from the site the other week, but
the machine and its three graphical displays are too big and heavy to shift in
my car for the moment!
then their reliability would be questionable
for anything but transfers off a system. You'd want to back them up
immediately from that media if possible, if the New old Stock was too old
itself.
I think I picked up about 15 of the sealed ones - if there is any kind of
useful resale market for them then I can always open one and do some
read-write testing; it's just not worth the time at this stage if they only go
for a buck each or something anyway! :)
cheers
Jules