[rescue] Big tape drives

[Eric Dittman]

> >>>>    Those TE16s will go with us to the grave, Josh...they're 
> >>>> incredibly
> >>>> difficult to find nowadays.
> >>>>
> >>>>    BUT...I'm not sure what kind of drives are on Claude's web page,
> >>>> but
> >>>> I assumed he wasn't talking about anything like a TE16...which is
> >>>> indeed an upright 9-track magtape drive, but really is just a set of
> >>>> rackmount components that can be put in any rack or set up on a 
> >>>> table.
> >>>> I assumed from what Eric said that the drive he saw was a big floor
> >>>> standing box that IS a tape drive, not a big rack that contains a 
> >>>> tape
> >>>> drive.
> >>>
> >>> We've got a couple of TA91s at work, which are upright floor-
> >>> standing tape drives, about five feet high, all of which are
> >>> the tape drives themselves.
> >>
> >>    Well there *are* some relatively modern exceptions.  I think we're
> >> really discussing the very old magtape drives whose vacuum columns go
> >> all the way to the floor. :-)
> >
> > It's a good thing you said relatively.
> 
>    Well, we're talking about 40-year-old drives here.
> 
>    When did the TA91 come out, anyway?  I'm pretty sure they weren't 
> around when I left my last VMS sysadmin job about 11 years ago.

My mistake, the TA91 is a six-foot tall dual 3480 tape loader.
We have two of them (four drives total).

The 9-track drives we have are a TA78 and a TA79, which have
been around for at least 18 years.
-- 
Eric Dittman
dittman at dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/