I was the mass storage region specialist for HP Australia when these came out. They were pretty reliable and compared to the previous 7970 and 7974 drives that had start/stop capstans, they were pretty good on tapes.
I just restored a 7980XC (HP commercial version of the 88780) and it all worked after I reinitialised the gains in each channel. David Collins +61 424 785 131 > On 29 Jan 2019, at 2:57 pm, Paul Berger via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > >> 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. > >
