On Fri 6 January, 2006 23:22 Alan Altmark wrote: > My oldest tape (from 1982) is probably no longer readable. > (A) I would have to find a [clean] 7-track 3420, and (B) I > never copied it to a fresh tape. It's probably a reel of > clear plastic sitting in a ferric oxide dust bath. :-)
You might be surprised. Last year I restored around 50 tapes from 1972 to 1985 or so, with about a 95% success rate. These had been sitting in open cartons in my attic, through 20 years of summers and winters (what *was* I thinking?). I used a 9348 SCSI drive from an AS/400, bought on eBay for $50, and connected to a PC running Linux. None of my tapes have any visible flaking oxide, bare spots, or similar things one might expect after all the abuse they've had. [It's an interesting exercise to think about why this 1994 tabletop drive has essentially the same performance specs as the high-end 3420-8 mainframe drive of 1975. It's obvious once you think of it, but it did take me a little while.] I can't help you with 7-track or 800 BPI unfortunately, but there are both hobbyists and commercial recovery services out there who can, if your data is interesting. (One intriguing commercial provider is at www.readtapes.com; intriguing among other things because they seem to have a sideline in dirty bomb detection technology! No connection, etc.) Tony H.
