23 Sep
2010
23 Sep
'10
6:52 a.m.
IBM sold the 20/40GB Mammoth 8MM drives so reliability must have been decent
at that point (different tape formulation I assume).
I linked to an ebay seller who had the correct tapes for that 8500 drive for
$4 shipped, not going to find anything much cheaper (even if free you are
paying for postage).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 9:44 AM
Subject: Re: 8 mm tapes
On 9/23/10 9:39 AM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
Video was commonly *tried* with 8500s, but not many people got very far.
Our error rates with "good" video tapes were upwards of 20%.
I've added a scsi tape drive to my collection. I hope to use
it with my Sparcbook. It is a Sun box with a sticker on it saying
that it is a EXB-8500C drive. Do I need special 8mm tapes
with it? How do I know what tapes will work with it?
I've never dealt with these drives before.
Especially for the low-capacity 8500/8200 Exabyte drives, 8mm video tape
was commonly used with the drives. Some may say that "isn't reliable",
but 8mm drives tend to not have
great reliability due to their helical scan head, including the fact
that they tend to drift out of alignment over time.
"Write-only media", yes. I've never seen a tape as unreliable as an
8200/8500.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL