[Info-vax] TK50 - this is annoying...

[Scott Dorsey]

On 2012-10-08 13:28, "Roßert G. Schaffrath" wrote:
>
> As bad as TK50's were, they were a definite improvement over the TU58. I
> recall much lost time waiting for an 11/730 bootstrapping microcode from
> one of those.

I completely disagree.  The TU58 was slow as molasses (what can you expect
from a glorified serial port?) but it never tore a leader, it never jammed,
it never shredded a tape and lost a critical dataset.

The TK50 was flaky and unreliable.  Not as flaky and unreliable as Exabytes,
but amazingly prone to complete data loss.  If you cared about your data
you needed to save it on two or three tapes.  Of course, when the leader
hook on the drive tore off, it didn't matter anyway.

Amazingly enough, the modern DLT and SDLT drives are pretty reliable.  I
have never seen one jam and shred a tape, although I have seen plenty of
them lose the leader hook.  
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."