Options for Installing a TF85 Drive

Rob Jarratt [robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com] wrote: 7f6c6 That's certainly news to me - I've never heard that before. Doesn't mean it's Not got a grain of truth behind it though. The reason given (internally to DEC, by the group responsible for these drives) for not being able to proceed past an inadvertent write (or physical damage) is that the drive is kept constantly synchronised by the stream of data that it reads. Once it loses that synch it no longer knows where it is and cannot recover. The stream of data is then just so much noise. The only recovery possible is at the beginning of a new data stream. Assuming that all of that was true (and, indeed, correctly remembered ...) then once you hit physical damage, the way the drive works will not let you recover data past that point. It's a feature. There may or may not be special firmware, but I've never heard of any. So I'd be willing to believe that a TF drive might handle some issues better than a TZ drive (although I'd prefer to see some corroborating evidence before repeating this meme myself), if you've got a damaged tape I'd be very surprised if either drive makes any difference at all. That's not a reason to avoid a TF85 or TZ85: you never know when you'll need one for some other tape you do want to read. Just don't sped too much! Antonio