Well I didn't find the Holy Grail but this is close! I went to a hamfest today and
in a box of junk I found the operating program for the HP 9877 Mass Memory unit!
That's the box that has up to four tape drives installed and was used to mass
duplicate HP 9825 tapes at the HP factory. The 9877 is a rare bird and was only offered to
the public for one year (1979 IIRC) but I've got two of the 9877s, Tony D has one and
NASA KSC has one but NO ONE has been able to locate the operating program for it till now.
The tape APPEARS to be in good condition but you know how HP tapes are :-(
The full name of the tape is "Duplicator 9825A/9877" and it's part number
is 09877-10002.
Other INTERESTING finds (in the same box no less!) were a new DC-300A tape (as used on
the IBM 5100 and Tektronix 4051), a Plot 50 tape and Plot 50 Backup tape and an Alignment
tape. All three are for the Tektronix 4051 computer.
Wahoo! A good ClassiComp day!
Joe