9-Track 1/2" Tape Drive Recommendations?

[Ali]

Jon,

> Enough Pertec drives were made so that manuals should be no problem.
> Some other makes were made in fairly small numbers so manuals may be a
> problem.

I should have been more clear - the manuals were for the ISA interface card
and the accompanying SW not for an particular drive.

> You have to decide, spring-arm, vacuum-column or streaming, and then
> most dual density drives were either 800/1600 or 1600/6250.  Few would
> do all three.  (Also there's 3200 BPI, identical to 1600 PE mode, just
> double the clock, but it is a fairly rare setup.)

Thanks for the info. I had seen (on YouTube) videos of the vacuum-column and
streaming drives. The spring arm I am not familiar with. Is it just an arm
that produces tension on the tape keeping it in place?

> Oh, with "Pertec interface" there are TWO FLAVORS!  The old system was
> Pertec unformatted, with 3 cables.
> Write, Read and Control.  Later was Pertec formatted, with two cables.
> They are totally incompatible, so make sure you get drives compatible
> with your interface.

Thanks again. I was not aware of this. My card has the two 50 pin edge
connectors coming from one cable that terminates in a D-Sub so I would say
this is the Pertec formatted interface. I could also go SCSI as long as the
tape drives would follow "standard" SCSI commands but those type of drives
seem even more expensive. 

-Ali