IBM 9348 9-track tape drive

[Lyle Bickley]

On Friday 17 June 2005 08:16, Al Kossow wrote:
> You may want to compare your drive to the documentation on the
> HP 88780 under bitsavers/pdf/hp/tape

These 9 track SCSI tape drives (HP 88780) were AKA 7979A, 7980A, 7980XC/SX.  
The were OEMed by a LOT of manufacturers, including IBM, Sun, Tandem, etc.

BTW: I downloaded the service and user manual from Al's site - and also found 
more information (IIRC parts list) on the Sun website.

I've got two of them, one of which is shared between my DOS/Linux 
PUTR/Teledisk/RT "universal" copy machine and my PDP 11/83.  Once cleaned and 
adjusted (if necessary) I have found them very reliable reading and writing 
1600 and 6250 bpi tapes (neither of my drives support 800).

They are a bit aggravating if a program fails to "observe" EOT - and read 
until the tape is totally on the take-up reel.  You have slide the drive out, 
open the cover, rethread the tape by hand, "rewind" manually past the EOT, 
close it up and then power up and rewind.

Cheers,
Lyle
-- 
Lyle Bickley
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
Mountain View, CA
http://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"