On 2019-01-28 9:19 p.m., Lyle Bickley via cctalk wrote:
On Mon, 28 Jan 2019 14:04:42 -0800
Al Kossow via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/132933407806
this is interesting because of the price and that all of the Sun
drives I've ever come across had the 800bpi option in them
That's been my experience, too. The 88780 I use is a Sun drive with
800/1600/6250.
What I love about these drives is that each track is adjustable
electronically for skew - which means one can adjust it to read
incorrectly skewed tapes without having to adjust/move the tape head!
(Of course, you have to re-adjust it "back" to normal - which makes it
something you want to do only when absolutely necessary).
I only wish the 88780's tape handling was a bit more "gentle"...
Cheers,
Lyle
I recall from my field service days these where a pretty fast streamer
and very reliable.
I remember one customer that had one and their data center manager had
bought some used tapes from a friend, these tapes where in such bad
shape that one of them stuck to the head hard enough to stall the reel
motor, which resulted in a billable service call. Next time I went back
the data center manager and his tapes where gone.
Another call I went on for something other than one of these tape
drives, as I am going into the data center I pass a guy pulling tape out
of the front of the drive, I thought it looked weird but didn't say
anything. It was a quick call and on my way out I stopp3ed and asked
what he was doing and he told me the drive missed the EOT marker and
wound completely onto the drive reel and he was now removing it by
pulling it out by hand. I told him he could have saved himself a lot of
trouble and not destroyed the tape if he had just wound a few feet onto
the supply reel manually, and then a quick load, reset and rewind his
reply was "Oh no that would never work!" I was like ok what ever, but by
that point it didn't really matter as he already had half a 3600 foot
reel in a heap in front of him.
Paul.
