26 May
2010
26 May
'10
10:32 a.m.
C. Archer wrote:
I have been fortunate in acquiring and restoring a Tek 4051 recently.
I had used one of these back in '77 to '82 and I still have some
documentation, and I found other manuals on bitsavers.org but have not
located any software. Do you know of any source on-line?
...
...it
would be nice to have the original standard pack tape programs.
The 4051 is a wonderful machine. When I worked at Tektronix between '77
and '90, I had a lot of occasion to work and play with this machine and
its variants (4052 and 4054). Their allure died off pretty quickly once
raster graphics came into its own, as the DVST (Direct View Storage
Tube) technology had some limitations, especially when it came to "live"
graphics.
I own a 4051 with a 4907 8" floppy drive system. I have quite a number
of games programs for the 4051, including the classic "SHOOT" series of
artillery firing games, the classic "WEATHER WAR", and quite a few other
games. My nieces and nephews get a kick playing these games on the
"antique computer" when they come to visit. Amazing that these simple
games can be so engaging when kids are used to Xbox and Playstation.
Problem is, I only have the games in floppy disk form, which doesn't
make them useful to others at this point. Other problem is that time is
hard to come by, and it'd take some time to transfer the programs to
some other electronic form. I will try to get to pulling these programs
off via serial RS-232 and make them available online somehow (probably
Bitsavers software archive), but not sure when I'll be able to do this.
It's my belief that part of the reason that software is so hard to find
for these machines is that they used a 1/4" QIC cartridge (DC-300A) tape
transport as the primary data storage medium. The problem is that the
tension bands in the DC-300A tapes degrade with time and eventually
break.
When this happens while the tape is in the transport results in the tape
generally getting mangled, making data recovery difficult. Another,
though much less-common problem with some cartridges is that the drive
wheel softens over time, and when the cartridge is placed in the
transport, the wheel ends up getting mangled, resulting in an inability
to read the tape at best, and mangled tape at worst.
The fact that this is a common occurrence has probably left a lot of
folks that may have some 405x software on tape frustrated when they try
to transfer it to other medium and end up with unreadable tapes at best,
or destroyed data at worst.
I have over 100, perhaps more, original tape cartridges with 405x
software on them. I also have a few vintage boxes of NOS (early 1980's)
unused DC-300A (Tektronix-branded) cartridges. All of them, without
exception, either have broken tension bands, or of they appear good,
break as soon as they are put into a transport. Reading them is
impossible without a new tension band. I can't find a source for
replacement tension bands. The only repair I know of is to try to find
a new cartridge that has a good tension band, and then go through the
tedious process of transplanting the good tension band into a cartridge
with a broken one. Problem is, DC-300's haven't been made for a long
time. There are currently other 1/4" QIC tape cartridges available on
the market that have tension bands which should work as transplant
candidates, but the cheapest one is around $30 (DC-6250) per cartridge
based on what I've been able to find in a quick online search. To
replace a bunch of tension bands using this method would be
prohibitively expensive (for me). Getting one good band and
transplanting it one at a time into cartridges with broken bands would
be extremely time-consuming, and again, time is something that I don't
have a lot of.
If anyone out there has ideas to remedy this situation, I'm open to
suggestions.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com