Wonderful, thanks much for the information!!! Due to financial concerns, I am selling my IBM 5100 (sigh) on Ebay. Most of the tapes were DC300A, and the extra ones I have are the DC600s. I am in the process of duplicating the tapes, 1) so I can keep a set of the Patch and Games tapes in case I can ever afford another one :), and 2) to make sure the tapes are readable. Thanks again! "r. 'bear' stricklin" wrote:

Keep us posted, although I hope you sell out of my league, for your own sake. John A.

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, Tony Duell wrote: Yeah, since then I've been reading a bit more about the 5100 and it soudns a lot like there's something peculiar going on in that drive. I doubt very much now the ability of the tapes to be read on most any drive other than that in the 5100. ok r.

Jerome Fine replies: I don't know if this information will help, but the DC600A tapes that I used to use (I probably now have quite a few I can make available) were placed in a TK25 tape drive made by DEC for a PDP-11. I used then about 10 years ago to make backups under RT-11. From what I learned over the years, they may have used a QIC-24 (or something like that - my memory is hazy) format. But I also suspect that the DEC tape drive might have switched the BOT with the EOT - although that might have been with the DC300 tapes that I used with an 11/23 system that had is own device driver. In any case, making a backup copy of the data to be placed on a TK25 tape drive using a DC600A media might not be a great idea as opposed to making a copy of the hard drive IF that possibility exists. There are always going to be trade offs between using what seems to be a good suggestion as opposed to what is even practical, let alone useful. With regard to what a PDP-11 would place on a DC600A tape, it would be far more useful to make a copy of the hard drive. However, since I don't have ANY experience at all with the IBM 5100, my observations (based on how a PDP-11 would use the information) are likely to be completely impractical. However, just thought I might point out the experience I have had from the DEC point of view. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.