Old Control Data Drives

[Chuck Guzis]

On 05/08/2015 08:48 PM, Billy Pettit wrote:

> These were great tape drives.  The 604 was 75ips versus 150ips for
> the 607.  Both drives were 200/556/800 bpi 7 track units.
>
> The weight was a killer.  But they were extremely reliable, easy to
> work on and easy to interface.  Al has manuals on them (I know
> because I loaned them to him) and I have a lot spare parts if someone
> wanted to try to get them working.
>
> These would be a good choice for recovering old 7 track tapes.  They
> used vacuum tensioning columns and vacuum capstans.  So very little
> contact with the magnetic slurry side of the tape.

Yup.   If a machine had a row of drives consisting of 657s and 607s, I'd 
always go for the 607s--just a better drive.  Someone mentioned that the 
657's had a cost-reduced voice-coil valve that accounted for some of its 
junkiness.  The 66x were particularly bad in this respect--crowding bits 
when writing short records--I remember spending a week holding a 
customer's hand while new firmware was worked up to fix the problem.

--Chuck