On the Emulation of TU58s

[tony duell]

> That seems to me like it would be the trickiest part. The TU58 schematic appears to indicate that there are 

I think so. Of course you could cheat by making it a read-only tape. But I don't like that.

> separate erase head gaps (not on a separate head like in audio cassette drives), so maybe those could be 

I am pretty sure there is just one physical head on the TU58 drive chassis. So if there is a separate erase
field, it is a second gap in that head.

> monitored to detect when a track is being written? Of course, that probably means that a custom 4-gap head 
> would need to be made with gaps matching the two read/write and two erase gaps (and a concave surface, 
> too, rather than recycling some audio tape head with suitable geometry to line up with just the read/write gaps.

Ouch. Good luck in getting that, and even more luck in getting it positioned properly!

-tony