On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 1:23 PM, Paul Koning <paulkon...@comcast.net> wrote: >>> The tape drive was not TK50. It was standard reel to reel media, horizontal >>> like an studio audio tape deck, with a cover that had to be lifted in order >>> to use it. The disk drive was housed in the same cabinet in a drawer below >>> the tape unit.
That gives me a better picture - I was thinking the O.P. said the tape drive was in the same cabinet as the CPU. Yeah... TU80, TU81, etc... Was not uncommon to have a full-sized disk drive (RA81, RA82...) below one of those. Would only be TU80 if the box had a DWBUA Unibus adapter. > The tape drive was "finicky" and seemed to work only with tapes ordered > through DEC. I don't remember any media problems with any of the tape drives I worked with, but I do know there were some tapes that were thinner to get more feet on a reel. I'm pretty sure we didn't use those. We bought our tapes by the pallet from a 3rd party, not DEC, largely because we sent our stuff to customers out on 9-track. They went in and out the door very rapidly. > The top mounted horizontal one is the TU80 and friends. Yep. > There was also a drive that had the tape loaded from the front, horizontally > (RK05 fashion), I forgot what that was called. It wasn't all that reliable > since it had to do autoload, no manual threading possible. TS05/TSV05 (Unibus vs Qbus). I also have a later drive of that style, a TSZ05, with a SCSI interface. I use it to read most of my old tapes. Cipher brand transport mechanism, typically. -ethan _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh