A guess only :
I have absolutely no idea. It's plenty large, though...
There's two boxes. One is the drive, the other is ???
The other is lighter than the drive.
I'll drag it in here first.
The front panel on the box says:
HP 1000 A900
I suspect this is an HP1000-series processor. Exactly what it is depends
on what cards are in it.
HEWLETT PACKARD.
It appears to fit into a DEC rack...
Standard 19" rack, I guess. A lot of stuff (computers, peripherals,
test gear,etc) fits that standard rack. There are also (much rarer) wider
racks for things that just can't fit into 19" - like big monitors.
It says "hp 7970E"
I think that's a standard HP 9-track tape drive.
Buttons a re LOAD, REWIND, ONLINE, RESET, 0, 1, 2, 3, OFF
Connector is a small printer-plug looking thing (Like the plug on your
printer, but smaller.
If it's a 24 pin connector (12 pins on each side) then it's almost
certainly HPIB/GPIB/IEEE-488 (all basically the same interface). HP used
this _hardware standard_ on a lot of their peripherals including disk
drives, tape drives, printers, test gear, etc. The same interface is
available for many other machines from HP calculators (!) to large minis.
A PC interface card is certainly made (by a number of companies, not just
HP), but won't be cheap.
I do have a scratch tape, how does one get the tape into these?
Well, I've not used that particular drive, but if it's a manual loader,
you open the front door, put the tape on the empty hub, thread it up
(there's normally a diagram inside), close the door and press 'Load'
If it's an autoloader (like the DEC TS-05) then you open the flap (you may
need power-on to do this), put the tape in the slot, close the flap and
press the load button.
Any info is appreciated.
-tony