29 Jan
2023
29 Jan
'23
6:31 a.m.
I'm not sure about 8mm tape specifically but the Exabyte drives that
were common on 1990s UNIX systems failed a lot.
There was a large proliferation of tape technology in the 1980s and
1990s, many of them not great in any dimension.
DLT, LTO, and especially the "enterprise" ranges from StorageTek or
IBM from any time period are all extremely reliable.
On Sat, Jan 28, 2023 at 3:16 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jan 2023, Larry McVoy wrote:
[...]
I've never seen a more fragile system than
those exabyte. By
comparison, the old SCSI QIC 150s, while small, were industructible, I
think you could have used the tapes as hammers and they'd still read.
Same thing for 9 track.
My experience with Exabytes was different; we used "data" tapes, not the
cheaper "video" tapes and had no problems over many years.
In fact, in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data8 we see:
``The cassettes have the same dimensions and construction as the
cassettes used in 8 mm video format recorders and camcorders.''
In other words, they are not the same thing...
-- Dave