Strange magtape anecdote

[jim stephens]

On 10/26/2020 10:50 PM, nico de jong via cctalk wrote:
> IBM 360/40 with 4 tapedrives.
the 3420 drives and I suspect their predecessors which were more common 
on the 360s used
one light bulb to run the light from one bulb all over the drive.

The 3420's we had had a big box of spaghetti tubing which were the light 
pipes to service our
  drives.  I had the box somewhere when we shut down.  The 3420s and 
3803 went one way,
the most of the service spares were abandoned.

There were a lot of weird problems with light sensors on those drives.  
We had some on our
360/50 at UMR as well, but the 2314 disk drives were more entertaining 
with hydraulic failures.

thanks
Jim

PS: when googling ran across this site using an interesting graphic with 
interesting peripherals.

https://serverpartswarehouse.com/100-oem-ibm-9348-001-magnetic-tape-unit/

PPS:  2420 drive reference page for that half inch drive.

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2420.html