cctalk Digest, Vol 121, Issue 26

Message: 3 Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:51:40 -0500 From: Garrett Meiers <me at GarrettMeiers.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: DEC TSZ07-CA 9-track Drive Message-ID: <CAGX+B9sYQM=QBEQwPMxgjCSoRUBWUpVaXHr0i8saiW3wtf_8pA at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 I have a DEC TSZ07-CA 9-track drive, in a desktop cabinet, that I got a couple of years ago. It was one of those situations where I had to have it, but had no use for it! Dug it out to play with, but it doesn't seem to power on. Anything special to get this thing to turn on? I'm assuming the PSU doesn't work, or has issues, but I've not tried to figure it out yet. Just wondering if it won't turn on because there is no tape loaded, etc. There is probably something wrong with it, but thought I'd ask. Whose drive is it? DEC didn't make any 9-track drives themselves. I looked it up, and it looks like a Cipher. We had one of those direct from Cipher, and it was a total piece of crap. You had to open up the top and manually help it to thread, and as the drive powered the NCR SCSI adapter hung on the back, you had to leave it powered on all the time to not hang the SCSI bus. About every month or two, a read channel chip would die. We got a bunch of the custom chips from Cipher, but it became too much hassle to replace these chips constantly. The Cipher would definitely turn on without a tape, but I guess there's just a power LED. The only way it knows there is a tape is to try to load it. Jon Jon