I've turned over the contact info to the three people who
were interested in these Sun systems.
What I really wanted to find was a tabletop SCSI 9-track.
By fortuitous circumstance, I checked eBay past auctions and
among the very few auctions was a guy 45 minutes away unsuccessfully
selling a few, so yesterday I picked up three units yesterday for $250.
For this to happen in SE Wisconsin and not Silicon Valley was
clear evidence of my clean living and resulting good karma.
Two HP 88780B and one slimmer Overland Data. The HPs are nice, heavy
engineering and all three appear to be in good shape.
If anyone wants one, I probably only need to keep one after I finish
a data conversion project for a client.
The client's data is circa 1992. A nearby data-entry place was still
using 9-tracks for long-term storage. They'd enter the data on PCs
and write to table-top units. They junked the last of their drives
a few years ago.
The tape drives I bought were pulled from active service in the
ink jet printing industry, the seller explained. "Ink jet" as in
addressing junk mail, for example. They were connected to VME-based
rack-mount systems that read the tapes and drove the printers
on the shop floor. So like paper tape and CNC, it seems that
9-tracks are still in use out there. Not all had switched to
other storage methods.
- John