Tape History - Freeman Reports

[Tom Gardner]

Hi

 

I'm sure some of us all remember Freeman Reports as the chronical of the
tape industry well into this century.  Ray Freeman and his partner and
successor Bob Abraham published these reports from at least 1983 until 2007
but with Bob's death in 2007 the reports and backup files apparently wound
up in a dumpster.  But Ray, Bob and Jim Porter did exchange copies of their
reports so thanks to Jim the Computer History Museum has almost all of the
Freeman Reports in their permanent collection.

 

There appear to be a few copies missing from the collection.  A complete
list of what the museum has and what maybe missing is posted at
http://mrxhist.org/tom94022/FreemanRpt.pdf.  In summary what may be missing
are:

Computer tape outlook - . half-inch products: 1994, 1985, 1990 & 1992

Computer tape outlook - . cassette/cartridge: 1984 & 1985

 

Computer tape outlook  -  all tape: 1997-2000  (as the market consolidated
towards LTO so did the reports J

 

Optical data storage outlook: 1985, 1988 & 1998

 

Mass storage/Library storage outlook: 1992, 1993, 1997 & 2000 

 

So before they all get trashed please look and see if you happen to have any
of the possibly missing editions in your garage, attic or any other
repository.

 

Contact me off line if you can help.

 

Tom