11 Jun
2004
11 Jun
'04
11:46 p.m.
On 12 Jun 2004, at 09:58, Jay West wrote:
An odd dec item I've never seen... it was
something like TA90Z... I
figure
it was a tape drive. Pretty huge. But on the front through the cabinet
cutout were the buttons I'm familiar with on 14" drives - run, stop,
fault,
drive ID plug, etc. And in the front was a recess where a removable
hand-held keypad unit sat. This hand held unit had like 40 or so
buttons on
it, almost looked like a diagnostic keypad or something. Odd.
ISTR that the TA90 was a re-badged IBM manufactured tape drive. The
tapes were relatively low capacity, but high speed and had a built in
tape changer. I recall visiting a large VAX site in Sydney that had two
or three of them.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"