tk50's and dlt

[Zane H. Healy]

> I've got a pile of tk50's I'd like to preserve
> the contents of. Maybe 300 or so. 
> 
> what's the fastest drive for reading them?
> 
> I have a qbus tk70, and probably a tkz-50 somewhere,
> but if it could read them faster, I'd be perfectly
> willing to acquire a tz30 or a dlt. Surplus dlt stackers
> like a tz887 are pretty cheap these days; could one
> of those do the job?

You'll want to pay close attention to what drive you get if you go with a
DLT drive.  I think you can use up the the DEC equivalent of a DLT2000
drive, however, it *MUST* be a DEC Drive, the Quantum drives can't read
them.

> format wise, many of the tapes are vms sw install kits.
> 
> is there a way (ie, existing sw and formats) to archive 
> these such that new install tapes could be cut without needing 
> a vms system to do it?

I'd recommend taking a look at the tools for SIMH, though personally, I
always use TPC format under VMS.  It would be nice if there was a version of
TPC for Unix, but the closest I'm aware of is a tool to convert TPC files to
SIMH TAP files.

		Zane