sun 88780 on ebay

[Paul Berger]

On 2019-01-28 9:19 p.m., Lyle Bickley via cctalk wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2019 14:04:42 -0800
> Al Kossow via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> https://www.ebay.com/itm/132933407806
>>
>> this is interesting because of the price and that all of the Sun
>> drives I've ever come across had the 800bpi option in them
> That's been my experience, too. The 88780 I use is a Sun drive with
> 800/1600/6250.
>
> What I love about these drives is that each track is adjustable
> electronically for skew - which means one can adjust it to read
> incorrectly skewed tapes without having to adjust/move the tape head!
> (Of course, you have to re-adjust it "back" to normal - which makes it
> something you want to do only when absolutely necessary).
>
> I only wish the 88780's tape handling was a bit more "gentle"...
>
> Cheers,
> Lyle

I recall from my field service days these where a pretty fast streamer 
and very reliable.

I remember one customer that had one and their data center manager had 
bought some used tapes from a friend, these tapes where in such bad 
shape that one of them stuck to the head hard enough to stall the reel 
motor, which resulted in a billable service call.  Next time I went back 
the data center manager and his tapes where gone.

Another call I went on for something other than one of these tape 
drives, as I am going into the data center I pass a guy pulling tape out 
of the front of the drive, I thought it looked weird but didn't say 
anything.  It was a quick call and on my way out I stopp3ed and asked 
what he was doing and he told me the drive missed the EOT marker and 
wound completely onto the drive reel and he was now removing it by 
pulling it out by hand.  I told him he could have saved himself a lot of 
trouble and not destroyed the tape if he had just wound a few feet onto 
the supply reel manually, and then a quick load, reset and rewind his 
reply was "Oh no that would never work!" I was like ok what ever, but by 
that point it didn't really matter as he already had half a 3600 foot 
reel in a heap in front of him.

Paul.