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

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <k4uvrv$ds6$1 at panix2.panix.com>,
	kludge at panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
> 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.

That's funny.  I still use TK50's and seldom have problems beyond needing
to clean the heads.

> 
> 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.  

Yeah, I have some of them, too.  I hav e never tried it, but it might be
fun to put one on a PDP-11 and do a full backup and restore just to see
how fast it can really be done.  :-)

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>