TU58 yet one more time

[shadoooo]

Hello,
I'm very interested on TU58, as I have a lot of tapes that I need to dump,
plus I would create some new (console at start) for my vax 730.
What I'm trying to do: use a drive mechanism connected with to modern mixed
signal microcontroller with USB port.
The device will be able to control the tape speed and to sample with ADC
and DAC the analog signals on the read / write heads, transferring the bare
samples with almost no filtering to a PC.
Then all the processing can be done via software.
In this way, a weak data track can be maybe recovered, and an empty tape
can be formatted.
It's impossible to use the tape drive with a DEC machine or via serial
port, but I'm not trying to emulate the standard TU58.
If somebody is interested, I can share my ideas, I already begun with the
hardware.
But I have to fix the capstan too...

Andrea