[Info-vax] VMS 5.0

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2011-11-10 22.24, Rich Alderson wrote:
> Johnny Billquist<bqt at softjar.se>  writes:
>
>> On 2011-11-10 18.33, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>
>>> My fading memory insists it was a "TU-81". It was nine track 1600 BPI.
>
>> Probably a TU80 in that case. The TU81 looks the same, but uses TMSCP
>> instead of the TS11 flavor interface. And the TU-81 can do 6250 bpi, as
>> well as 1600 bpi. I can't think of any sane person who would want to do
>> 1600 if you had the choice of 6250 as well.
>
> Digital's 9track distribution tapes were done at 1600bpi into the 1990s,
> since that was "always" available at a customer site (whether the drive
> was dual 800/1600 or 1600/6250, or flat out 1600 only), at least on the
> 36-bit systems, and from all appearances on the 16- and 32-bit systems as
> well.  (We have in our archives an 800bpi Languages tape for the DEC-10
> which was written with a predecessor to BACKUP and is not processable on
> the currently running system.)

In all fairness, he did complain about the time for a BACKUP /VERIFY, 
which suggested he was writing to the tape, not reading a 
distribution... :-)

But apart from that, yes. 1600 bpi, or sometimes even 800 bpi was what 
DEC shipped. I can't remember how many times I must have written out 
labels when I was at DEC, writing either "16MT9" or "8MT9" on those 
labels...

	Johnny