On 01/18/2016 11:53 AM, js at
cimmeri.com wrote:
On 1/18/2016 12:46 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
Last year I read in some 1993 backups of my
MicroVAX
system with no trouble at all. I did have to clean the
tape head after every tape, but that wasn't greatly
different from when the tapes were new.
What media were those backups on (eg. TK70)?
9 track, 6250 BPI, recorded on CDC Keystone (92185)
streaming drives, and read back on the same type.
I built an interface so I could read the tapes in on a Linux
system, and then used some publicly available software to
unpack the BACKUP formatted images to native Linux files.
The Pertec formatted tape interface is quite simple. My
interface is pretty simple, though, and is controlled
through the parallel port, so the tapes are processed at 25
IPS start/stop mode.
If I were going to do it now, I'd use a Beagle Bone, and it
probably would stream at 75 IPS.
Jon