User talk:Gandalf/hw/filestore 2

tape drive - what kind of tapes?

The tape drive is interesting. Is 1/2 inch (I'm guessing that means that the tape itself is 0.5 inch wide) tape the same as "9-track tape"? And, is this the same as CCT (Computer Compatible Tape)? In A recent haul, I got some 0.5 inch wide tapes, but I don't have a tape drive. --Torfinn (talk) 11:28, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

The half-inch tapes are CCTs, and, in this case, 9-track CCT. But there was also 7-track CCTs, an earlier standard. Your tapes are probably 9-track. No markings at all? If you see 6250bpi or 1600bpi anywhere, it's 9-track. If you see 800bpi it's almost certainly 9-track too, although that density was shared with a tiny selection of 7-track drives for a short time window, afaik. ND used only 9-track CCT drives. The drive in the picture looks quite similar to some drives we used at work, although I don't recall them to be StorageTek. But we also had the CDC small division SCSI disks at the same time (630MB formatted), so it's possible. Those drives had problems with CCTs from long storage, if they had become sticky. I would run the tape once through an Anritsu DMT 2820 drive first, then read the tape successfully in the ND drive (I own that Anritsu now, I used it later to read my old ND (and a few VAX) tapes, after the last ND computer was gone. Had to write some software first, of course). --TArntsen (talk) 21:41, 25 June 2016 (UTC)