Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Nemo via cctalk]

On 11/02/2019, Eric Smith via cctalk  wrote (in part):
> I haven't yet unboxed it. I took photos of the outside of the destroyed box
> to send to the shipper. The front bottom left corner of the 88780 is
> visible through a hole in the box, and is visibly mangled.

Who was the seller?  (The ebay link did not list the seller.)

N.

sun 88780 on ebay

[Jeff Woolsey via cctalk]

*Eric Smith *writes:

> On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 11:18 AM Al Kossow  > wrote:
>
> >/Does it have the 800 bpi option board? />//
> I haven't yet unboxed it. I took photos of the outside of the destroyed box
> to send to the shipper. The front bottom left corner of the 88780 is
> visible through a hole in the box, and is visibly mangled.
>
I acquired mine as a piece of decommissioned hardware where I worked. 
It came home with me in my car.

Some time later (mid 90s) I loaned it to a friend for some contract work
at .  I drove it up
there and delivered it on a cart.  The stars, however, did not align for
getting it back to me the same way so they shipped it to me where I
worked.  There was some damage to the plastic front cover and control
panel mounts.  I was able to repair or work around most of it, and the
unit still works fine to this day. (Well, the plastic take-up reel is
loose...)

Pretty much everything I have that could go in a rack I fetched myself
rather than having it shipped to me.  While one can't always do that, I
recently carted home an HP 3455A multimeter from Los Angeles, some 400
miles.  I was already in the area, otherwise I don't think I'd've made
the round trip just for it.

> Based on the service manual, it appears that option 800 requires:
> * buffer PCA 07980-6xx14 (512K) or 07980-6xx34 (1M)
> * read/write/formatter PCA 07980-6xx31
>
Mine has the 800 bpi option.  Not by inspection, but by operation.

-- 
Jeff Woolsey {{woolsey,jlw}@jlw,first.last@{gmail,jlw}}.com
Nature abhors straight antennas, clean lenses, and empty storage.
"Delete! Delete! OK!" -Dr. Bronner on disk space management
Card-sorting, Joel.  -Crow on solitaire

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Kevin Bowling via cctalk]

I am in the market for this option as well, after Al is taken care of if he
needs it.

On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 1:27 PM Eric Smith via cctalk 
wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 11:18 AM Al Kossow  wrote:
>
> > Does it have the 800 bpi option board?
> >
>
> I haven't yet unboxed it. I took photos of the outside of the destroyed box
> to send to the shipper. The front bottom left corner of the 88780 is
> visible through a hole in the box, and is visibly mangled.
>
> I'll take more photos as I unbox it tonight.
>
> Based on the service manual, it appears that option 800 requires:
> * buffer PCA 07980-6xx14 (512K) or 07980-6xx34 (1M)
> * read/write/formatter PCA 07980-6xx31
>
> Were there any other hardware changes for option 800? If not, one wonders
> why HP documentation is adamant that it cannot be field-upgraded to option
> 800.
>

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 11:18 AM Al Kossow  wrote:

> Does it have the 800 bpi option board?
>

I haven't yet unboxed it. I took photos of the outside of the destroyed box
to send to the shipper. The front bottom left corner of the 88780 is
visible through a hole in the box, and is visibly mangled.

I'll take more photos as I unbox it tonight.

Based on the service manual, it appears that option 800 requires:
* buffer PCA 07980-6xx14 (512K) or 07980-6xx34 (1M)
* read/write/formatter PCA 07980-6xx31

Were there any other hardware changes for option 800? If not, one wonders
why HP documentation is adamant that it cannot be field-upgraded to option
800.

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

Does it have the 800 bpi option board?

On 2/11/19 10:01 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 6:03 PM Al Kossow via cctalk  > wrote:
> 
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/132933407806
> 
> 
> It was packaged improperly by the seller and destroyed in transit.
> 

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 2/11/19 10:01 AM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 6:03 PM Al Kossow via cctalk 
> wrote:
> 
>> https://www.ebay.com/itm/132933407806
>>
> 
> It was packaged improperly by the seller and destroyed in transit.

Happens all too often.  Palletizing is probably the safest, but try and
get a seller to do that.

--Chuck

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 6:03 PM Al Kossow via cctalk 
wrote:

> https://www.ebay.com/itm/132933407806
>

It was packaged improperly by the seller and destroyed in transit.

RE: sun 88780 on ebay

[David Collins via cctalk]

Al, I'm afraid I don’t...  They were made in Greely Colorado but that plant has 
long since closed and I don’t have any contacts from there. 

-Original Message-
From: cctech  On Behalf Of Al Kossow via cctech
Sent: Wednesday, 30 January 2019 3:55 AM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: sun 88780 on ebay



On 1/28/19 8:08 PM, David Collins via cctalk wrote:

> I just restored a 7980XC (HP commercial version of the 88780) and it all 
> worked after I reinitialised the gains in each channel. 

David, do you know of anyone that has the schematics for these drives?
MANY years ago, someone in Seattle had them, but I never was able to get the 
guy who said he got a copy tell me who that was.

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[emanuel stiebler via cctalk]

On 2019-01-29 14:45, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

> A 30+ track head to deal with a variety of tape formats would be ideal.  Not 
> just 7 and 9 but real oddballs -- there are some 10 track 1/2 inch tape 
> formats around.  Not to mention that one could read DECtape that way, even if 
> the head is only 1/2 inch wide (some loss of redundancy in that case).
> 
> Are the heads that Bordynuik mentioned still around?

On ebay? IBM 31F7092 36 Track ...

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Jan 29, 2019, at 2:31 PM, John Foust via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> ...
> I posted about his a few years ago.  See below.
> ...
> He wishes there was a modern replacement for reading old tapes.
> Seven-track and nine-track.  Speed is not an issue; data recovery is.
> He says hardly anyone wants to write to tapes any more.
> 
> A simple transport, a flexible read-head, a bunch of software, right?
> Call it TapeFerret.

The design described by John Bordynuik seems like a good one, and would be 
easier still by now.  A Beaglebone with FPGA daughtercard is probably plenty 
for the signal processing part.

A 30+ track head to deal with a variety of tape formats would be ideal.  Not 
just 7 and 9 but real oddballs -- there are some 10 track 1/2 inch tape formats 
around.  Not to mention that one could read DECtape that way, even if the head 
is only 1/2 inch wide (some loss of redundancy in that case).

Are the heads that Bordynuik mentioned still around?

paul

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[John Foust via cctalk]

At 10:55 AM 1/29/2019, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
>David, do you know of anyone that has the schematics for these drives?
>MANY years ago, someone in Seattle had them, but I never was able to get the 
>guy who
>said he got a copy tell me who that was.

Do you know this guy?

http://www.comco-inc.com/hp-88780-9-track-tape-drive-p29921.html

I posted about his a few years ago.  See below.

- John

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:40:33 -0600
To: 
From: John Foust 
Subject: Re: Want a 9-track repair business?


At 02:04 PM 10/5/2011, I wrote:
>I had three 9-tracks I'd picked up a few years ago.  None worked
>out of the box; they collected dust.  Last weekend I knew I'd pass
>by http://www.comco-inc.com/ in Bettendorf, Iowa, one of the few 
>9-track sales and service places I'd found. 

This fellow called me again today, out of the blue.  

In the year ahead, he hopes to sell his building and down-size,
focusing on the repair of smaller drives and dumping the bulk
of his 9-track business.  It sounds like he has a bunch of 
88780-class 9-tracks that'll go to the scrapper.

He wishes there was a modern replacement for reading old tapes.
Seven-track and nine-track.  Speed is not an issue; data recovery is.
He says hardly anyone wants to write to tapes any more.

A simple transport, a flexible read-head, a bunch of software, right?
Call it TapeFerret.

He mentioned another company that makes a modern 7-track drive and
sells it for $50K+ to the seismic end of the oil industry.

And that's where his 9-track business is today: much is for the oil
industry mostly outside the USA.  They want to read old seismic data 
and reprocess it using new techniques to find more oil.  Another more 
profitable business is fixing more recent tape drives for IBM mainframes.
Another chunk is a few specific models of 9-track that work with 
old Alcatel phone switches.  There's still some equipment and 
processes that require a real drive and that does not work with 
tape emulators.  

I offered to hook him up with buyers for any still-working units
he doesn't want to keep when he downsizes his business.  

I also offered to connect him with the professional classic computer
curators who might need his help when it comes to reading or 
restoring old tape media and devices.

- John 


>Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:04:41 -0500
>To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
>From: John Foust 
>Subject: Want a 9-track repair business?
>
>
>I had three 9-tracks I'd picked up a few years ago.  None worked
>out of the box; they collected dust.  Last weekend I knew I'd pass
>by http://www.comco-inc.com/ in Bettendorf, Iowa, one of the few 
>9-track sales and service places I'd found.  I didn't have much 
>advance warning, so I just brought the drives with me and left them
>at his door step because the shop was closed.  I left an M4 9914, 
>an Overland Data 5622, and an HP 88780.
>
>Diagnosis is $495, deductable from repairs if I proceed.  Ouch!
>
>He says he still sells "a few" 9-tracks a year.  His offer to me
>was a reconditioned HP 88780 for $1795 including manual, cleaning pads
>and a scratch tape.  
>
>He said "BIG IDEA... Here's a wonderful chance to corner the 9-track 
>business: I'll sell you 1000 lbs of parts for $1,000 (FOB Bettendorf). 
>I'll even throw in graphics, manuals, etc. At the very least, you 
>will be able to build several drives. I am not kidding."
>
>The building he's in has a commercial real-estate "for sale" sign 
>out front.  Maybe he was a renter and he needs to move.
>
>- John

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

doesn't matter.
it would be on the options list, which the seller smeared out

the other odd thing was there should be a sun logo badge on the front


On 1/29/19 1:44 AM, Christian Corti via cctalk wrote:

> I read
>   HP Tape Drive 1/2" 1600/6250 1E
> on the label at the back.

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 1/28/19 8:08 PM, David Collins via cctalk wrote:

> I just restored a 7980XC (HP commercial version of the 88780) and it all 
> worked after I reinitialised the gains in each channel. 

David, do you know of anyone that has the schematics for these drives?
MANY years ago, someone in Seattle had them, but I never was able to get the 
guy who
said he got a copy tell me who that was.

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Christian Corti via cctalk]

On Mon, 28 Jan 2019, Al Kossow 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


I read
  HP Tape Drive 1/2" 1600/6250 1E
on the label at the back.

Christian

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[David Collins via cctalk]

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  
> 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  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.
> 
> 

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Paul Berger via cctalk]

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  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.

Re: sun 88780 on ebay

[Lyle Bickley via cctalk]

On Mon, 28 Jan 2019 14:04:42 -0800
Al Kossow via cctalk  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
-- 
73   NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
http://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

sun 88780 on ebay

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

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