A few years ago someone working on Hercules got a copy of TOS/360 on 7 track tape. (With the translation feature to write 8 bit data.) First problem was finding a drive to read it, second was to undo the translation back to 8 bits.
Al Kossow at the Computer History Museum is the one to talk to when reading 7 track tapes with ancient software. I am always on the hunt for 3480 head assemblies for him, as he uses them to read oddball tapes. So if you have 3480s ready to go to the scrapper, let me know. Or any other old mainframe junk for that matter...
There used to be some about how much data NASA had on 7 track tape from the early space missions, and that there might not be enough drives around when someone wanted the data. I don't know any more about it than that.
Every bit of every mission is now available on CD-ROM or WORM. In fact, the data has always been available in reasonably current media at the time. What is missing or lost are thje original telemetry tapes - the raw analog data from the spacecraft. Most scientists do not see this as a big loss - all the data was pulled off of them years ago. -- Will ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
