17 Feb
2007
17 Feb
'07
2:36 p.m.
Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
OK, I'm just not familiar with 9-track drives in
the sense of who
manufactures the guts that everyone uses.
So were these used on PDP-11s? IBM machines? Control Data?
You would most likely see Kennedys on minicomputers, especially
in aftermarket upgrades. PDP-11's, DG's, etc.
Other manufacturers made tape drives for IBM's and Mainframes.
There was a good amount of crossover between the high-end mini
and low-end mainframe peripherals.
You say pretty much everything, but I've never
heard of Kennedy drives
before. Is that because everyone else bought them from Kennedy and
then OEMed them with their own label on them?
Kennedy was located in Monrovia CA (outside LA) at least in the 70's and 80's.
They made not only mini-oriented tape drives, but also hard drives.
Very common in the mini world were the "Pertec unformatted" and
"Pertec formatted" interfaces, and Kennedy and others used one or the
other or both these interfaces with minor variations on most all of
their drives from the early 70's onward.
Their last models of 9-track drives were the slotloaders and
extensively relabeled by everyone. I personally prefer their earlier
vacuum-column and swing-arm drives - what's the use of a tape drive
unless you can see the reels spinning? :-). Their older drives
didn't have embedded microcomputers and are more fun to work on too
(and need more work as well!)
Tim.