On 11/12/2015 05:24 AM, Tom Moss wrote:
I've had very mixed (about 50/50) success with 9-track, but after reading a
bit about DECtape it looks like they should still be holding up nicely.
Anyone care to share their experiences?
Long, long time ago I had a DECtape that had been severely 'stretched'
by a problem with a drive. Normally when the drive reverses direction,
it is smooth, and the tape stays firmly laying on the read/write head.
But this drive needed adjustment and when the drive stopped after
reverse motion, the motion on the left reel didn't stop as quickly as
the motion on the right reel. Results: the tape would rise above the
head a bit than 'snap' down when motion had ceased and the tension was
re-affirmed. Once, unfortunately when I was out of the room, the tape
flipped off the head and the reels started madly spinning (trying in
vain to tension the tape that was no longer on the head area. Since the
motors were spinning at different speeds (re the 'braking' problem,) the
right reel was spinning faster and 'winning' causing the tape to get
twisted pretty badly into a 1/8 mylar 'rope'.
After powering down the drive and removing the tapes, I carefully
unwound this mess and restored it to the original reel. Part of the
tape where the most twisting had been done was now 'stretched' and only
about 80% of its original width. You would think this would cause a
problem? Not with DECtape. I was able to copy this wounded tape to
another with no more than a few retries. No data loss.
Alas, I tossed the original. It would have been a good trophy.
-Gary
