TS05AA drives?

[Chuck Guzis]

On 01/19/2017 08:12 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> On 01/19/2017 12:46 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>> A streamer with big powerful reel servos makes me a bit nervous in 
>> those cases. After all, the design goal there is speed, not
>> gentleness.
> The CDC Keystone (92181 and 92185) drives have air bearing hubs that 
> sense tape tension by how tightly the tape is pulled over the
> bearing. So, the ONLY thing that actually touches the data surface of
> the tape is the head and the cleaner blade.  Still, on deteriorated
> tapes, it starts getting pretty bad.  On good tapes from my archive,
> it just takes a cleaning of the head after every reel.

I'm familiar with the CDC air-bearing hubs, having cut my magtape teeth
many years ago on CDC 607 drives, then the 657/659 somewhat inferior
ones, then eventually the 66x autoloaders.   I'll agree that the system
is very good, particularly in the case of vacuum-column drives.

But I haven't seen any Keystone drives for sale lately. Pity that.

--Chuck