unreadable HP cartridges

[Tom Jennings]

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, Fred Cisin wrote:

> It USETA be readily available from professional video places for lining up
> reel to reel tape and splicing it without losing synch.

HEY HEY HEY we have standards here! THat's spelled YOUSTA. Get
with duh program.

>> pattern? You couldn't program a new tape with it.
>
> ... but with sufficient time and effort, you could MANUALLY
> read the tape :-)
> How long would an entire tape take?

More seriously, how about a semi-automated process to read the
data *optically* from severely damaged tapes?

Drag the tape slowly, oxide up, coat with colloidal FeO, run it
past a camera. Post-processed video data could be 'decoded', bad
spots stopped at, manually interpolated/ repaired (human visual
acuity is pretty damn good).