26 Nov
2019
26 Nov
'19
3:38 a.m.
On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote:
It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun,
but I can't defend these
drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only
tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel and
the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed like
crap.
I see you've never enjoyed the thrills of "print through" on the 9-tracks,
nor the build-up of gunk (the then Australian Atomic Energy Commission had
a "tape cleaner" whereby the tape was basically run over a sharp blade).
And as for the QIC-150 drive that would occasionally fall back to what I
would call a QIC-75 when presented with media previously written at a
lower density... I recall that an EPROM upgrade fixed that.
-- Dave