IBM MT/ST recovery; was: IBM 3480 DEC TKZ60 inquiry

[Chuck Guzis]

On 12/17/2017 09:52 PM, Jon Elson wrote:

> There were several DIFFERENT formats used with these standard tape
> cartridges.  I have some old CDC Patriot tape drives that did a
> serpentine single track at a time format on a 3480-compatible tape. I
> don't think any DEC drive supported the 18-tracks-wide IBM 3480 format. 
> I think DEC's drives were also serpentine.  If they are really from an
> IBM compatible system (really too late for 360, most likely 370 systems)
> then I think only an IBM-compatible drive would read them.  Wikipedia
> says the 3480 was introduced in 1984.

Well, this is part of the job.  I got the potential client to send a
photo of the cartridge--and he managed to get a 3480 cartridge for
comparison.

It's clearly an IBM MT/ST cart:

https://imgur.com/a/K9vyg

Anyone around who can recover the data from these things?

--Chuck