On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:14:59AM -0400, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: > On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:32:04 +0200, Randy Bush said: > > > you left out one connection via a chevy full of hollerith cards and the > > second a canoe full of 7 track tape in waterproof containers. > > Does anybody actually *have* a functional 7 track drive? I remember seeing a > story on PBS (may have been a Nova episode) where they discussed the fact that > NASA had literally thousands of 7 track tapes of telemetry data and no way to > read them because their last 7 track drive had died, and IBM had no 7 track > read/write heads left either... > > (I admit we still have a rack of 9-track tapes in ez-loader seals in our tape > library, though we got rid of our last IBM 3420 about a decade ago. I think > most of them are tapes we've lost track of ownership info, and don't dare > dispose of in case the owner turns up.. ;) >
I know of two sites that have them and there are folks who keep older kit running. its not cheap and they are not high volume. /bill