Non-baking cure for sticky shed? (being serious for a moment)

[Jon Elson]

On 01/18/2016 11:53 AM, js at cimmeri.com wrote:
>
>
> On 1/18/2016 12:46 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
>
>>   Last year I read in some 1993 backups of my MicroVAX 
>> system with no trouble at all.  I did have to clean the 
>> tape head after every tape, but that wasn't greatly 
>> different from when the tapes were new.
>
> What media were those backups on (eg. TK70)?
>
9 track, 6250 BPI, recorded on CDC Keystone (92185) 
streaming drives, and read back on the same type.
I built an interface so I could read the tapes in on a Linux 
system, and then used some publicly available software to 
unpack the BACKUP formatted images to native Linux files.  
The Pertec formatted tape interface is quite simple.  My 
interface is pretty simple, though, and is controlled 
through the parallel port, so the tapes are processed at 25 
IPS start/stop mode.

If I were going to do it now, I'd use a Beagle Bone, and it 
probably would stream at 75 IPS.

Jon