Mag Tapes was RE: Got Videotrax card working

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Steven N. Hirsch wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Paul Koning wrote:
>
> > >>>>> "Joe" == Joe R <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> writes:
> >
> >  Joe> At 11:14 PM 3/12/05 -0500, James Fogg wrote:
> >  >>  Over the years I've learned to never trust tape of any kind.
> >
> >  Joe> That's been my experience. I've never been able to get a tape
> >  Joe> backup that worked. That includes brand new ones, DATs and
> >  Joe> everything else. I know tapes have been a mainstay in the
> >  Joe> computer field but I've had nothing but trouble with them.
> >
> > My view is that there are PC class tapes and real tapes.  Real tapes
> > include classic half inch reel, DLT, and presumably IBM' cartridges (I
> > haven't used those).  The most obvious nasty example of PC class tapes
> > are QIC cartridges.  DAT is similar -- those are miniature video
> > tapes, forced into pretending to be data tapes.
>
> Hmm.  When you condemn QIC cartridges, I hope this is restricted only to
> the smaller format media (as used by AST, Irwin and others long-departed).
> Certainly, the full-sized QIC media like DC6525, Magnus 1.0, etc. were
> routinely used for backing up and restoring "real" computers.  I never had
> any problems with the large cartridges, although you did have to be
> careful whose drive you used (Wangtek and Archive were exquisite pieces of

I used Colorado Jumbo drives pretty extensively and usually had good
experiences with them, though the hardware could be flaky sometimes.  I
don't think I ever lost any data due to media failures.

> crap; Tandberg seems to have been the "Gold Standard" for serious use and
> was OEM equipment for IBM, Sun, DEC and others.)

Are you sure you're not thinking of Archive?  I find more Archive 2150S
drives than anything else in old machines.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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