I struck out on the IBM 3480 heads, IBM took them
back.
To give people some context, I bought 16 3480 drives in Chicago, and field
stripped them last week for the heads to use in a tape recovery project. I
had asked William when he was out in CA if he knew of any other drives
around.
More details on the drive conversion as it develops. There is a proof of
concept running in Canada, but I am unable to get details, so I'm having to
start from scratch (the same as I had to do for the DECtape interface).