On 7/2/16 11:54 AM, Jay West wrote: What tape drive? You'd either have to pick one old enough that they still had separate formatters, or have mods to pick off the data before the decoders. There is also the problem of direct control of the transport. Qualstar 105x would probably be the one i'd try, since it is still sort of common, and not insanely expensive to still buy used, is pretty simple, I have a couple of dozen of them, and I've modded one where I've mounted a 7-track head. This is also needed for 4-track fixed-head 1/4" tapes. I have a couple of old Kennedy drives that I was just thinking about modding to read all 4 tracks in parallel. Then, it's just a forward and backwards pass over the tape, the same as you do on 1/2". I have a huge backlog of tape at CHM, so this is pretty high on my list to get done this year.