TK50, was: Re: [TUHS] Ultrix Tape: Block Size?

[emanuel stiebler]

On 2018-10-16 20:37, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Oct 16, 2018, at 1:23 PM, William Pechter via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>
>> DEC Tape II was the serial driven TU58.
>> The TK50 was CompacTape or something like that.  It was the predecessor of a number of square tapes...
>>
>> See DLT on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Linear_Tape
>>
>> Bill

> I used DLT on RSTS systems, with a Qbus interface.  Those were modest speed hosts and buses, but I never remember data late or overrun issues, and we drove those tapes quite hard in full time streaming mode for backup and software distribution.  Longer blocks, too (2k or so) which would make any buffering issues more severe.

Just few words here, as I'm not sure anymore we are talking about the
same thing ...

there were
TK50Z as an external drive, on "SCSI"
TZ30 internal drive, on "SCSI", using TK50 tapes
TK50 on QBUS with an TQK50 controller which really didn't stream to often
TK50 on QBUS with an TQK70 controller, which doubled the memory of the
TQK50, which was capable of streaming ...