4 Feb
2006
4 Feb
'06
3:19 p.m.
I'm a little curious--what kind of success might one have reading old (20+
years) HP tapes written on an HP9835? I was asked this recently and I
opined that based on what I'd heard, particularly from the HP calculator
group, that the chances of retrieving error-free data was not all that
good.
Was I accurate? Or are the 98xx tapes an exception?
Alas fairly low. The tapes for the 98x5 machines are much the same
construction as those for the HP85. The problem is that the belt sticks
to the oxide layer on the tape, and/or the tape sticks together, and you
get major loss of the magnetic coating when you try to read the tape.
Needless to say this makes it unreadable.
-tony