9 track reel tapes

I've never had problems with BASF tapes, so that would be ok. 800 to 6250 means in fact that they can be used on all 9 track drives. However, I dont think you can sell 7" tapes. The capacity is too limited, A wild guess is that the tape length is about 600 ft = (600 x 12) = 7.200 inches. Even at 6250 bpi and without interblock gaps, the capacity would be only 45 MB. As interblock gaps are 0.6" at least, a datablock of 6250 bytes would occupy 1.6". So, 7200 / 1.6 = 4500 blocks = 28 MBbyte Another example : datablocks of 1600 bytes would occupy (0.4 + 0.6) = 1.0" Again: 7200 / 1 = 7200 blocks of 1600 bytes = 11.5 MB.... I've only _seen_ those tapes used in connection with software patches from IBM, and on data-entry equipment like the Mohawk . Horrible system. My (biased) opinion is that _if_ 9-track tapes can be sold, it will only be the full size (2400 or 3600 feet) Nico