Seek out AJ (of Forgotten Machines), I saw his "portable self-made QIC reader" in operation and it's very fantastic. He's active on his Discord channel. I think the device he made could handle 7 tracks? But the IBM tapes were investigating at the time were only 2 track.
There is a bit of context difference between earlier DC (data cartridge) and the later generation QIC. My view: QIC became a kind of organization that formalized the media format, and offered longer tapes. While DC is generally the earlier 300 or 600ft variety. It's not a very good "long shelf life" format, since that rubber band can eat into the tape. But when it does work, it really is much faster and better than the smaller audio tapes. The Wang-folks seem to have decoded the QIC format for their systems. But I'm not sure if any Wang system ever ran Unix. But CorelDraw, on a QIC tape? Makes me want to write "AutoCAD for VIC-20" on an old cassette tape and toss it on the free pile at a VCF :P On Thu, Dec 12, 2024 at 9:14 PM Cameron Kelly via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Hello, > > I have a QIC tape of an interesting piece of software that doesn’t seem to > be archived anywhere. I don’t have experience using QIC tape so I’m > inquiring if anyone here would be willing to offer the service. The > software in question is “CorelDraw For Unix”. > > Thanks, > > Cameron
