DECassette questions

Joe> I picked one of these up a while back and stumbled across it Joe> yesterday. It's a model TU80 IIRC. Does anyone have Joe> anyexperience with them? I've never seen or heard of one in Joe> actual use but I know it's supposed to be useable on the PDP-8 Joe> so I may try to hand it on my -8 if they're any good (and I can Joe> find the right interface card). What kind of cassette tapes do Joe> they use and how hard are they to find and format? It wouldn't be a TU80, that's a half inch 9 track streaming tape drive (predecessor of the TU81/TA81). Its controller speaks the TS11 programming interface (ugh). What you describe sounds like a TA11. That's probably really the controller name; I'm not sure what the drive is called. The 1976 PDP-11 peripherals handbook lists the TA11 (it's on Bitsavers). The description says that it uses "proprietary DEC Philips-type cassettes". What that proprietariness consists of is not clear; it may mean that is has digital tape (square loop) as opposed to audio tape in the cassette. Quite possibly a plain old audio cassette may work (ferrite type -- but if that fails then chrome tape might be worth trying). paul