When I was in college, I worked in a data center for a bank as a mainframe operator on the evening/night shift. They used an NCR mainframe with 9-track tape drives similar to the 'granddaddy' one you showed. Lest you think I am positively ancient, this was from 1997 to 2001. Like most banks, their approach to technology was simple: CAN it be done without buying anything new? Then you don't get anything new. Doesn't matter how old and busted it is. While I worked there, we got a call from a restaurant in another part of the country. Turns out, they were the ONLY other people in the entire nation still using the model of mainframe we were. And they were getting rid of it and replacing it with a PC. They gave it to us for free if we would haul the monstrous thing away. The tape drives in particular were a nightmare. They had the vacuum-driven autoloading, which is totally awesome... when it works. Unfortunately, the primary tape drive we used had a broken seal so could not get a proper vacuum. And it squealed like mad. It was positively deafening in the mainframe room where I primarily worked. Most of the time, I had to thread the tape manually, but had to let it try to do it auto a few times before it gave up and let me do it by hand. The drive itself was much larger than the one you showed, about 5 feet tall (but the same width and the same vertical layout). Rather than a cabinet door on a hinge, it had a neat sliding clear plastic 'blast shield' type thing that would open/close as necessary. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they were still running that mainframe and those tape drives. Short of a catastrophic failure like the thing bursting into flames, the bank simply was not willing to upgrade. They got bought by another bank chain and everyone said they were going to close the separate data center and merge all the systems into the purchasers existing data center... but when I ran into an ex-coworker 5 or 6 years later, he said they gave up on migrating it because dealing with all the old software was just too much...
The mechanics of the 8878OB (the first one, using vacuum to load the tape) run so smooth and seem built to last for eternity, very impressive, I'm loving it! I'm also thrilled that there are people out there, scattered over the world, who have a fundamental understanding on how data data reading and writing is controlled via the I/O on these machines on which they are able to write software to run those machines from a (much) later and very different platform and interface than initially thought to work with. I think that that ability is very unique and I'm happy that these people are in contact with another.
I had *BOTH* of these very devices, and used them regularly for backup, and to distribute commercial software back in the 1980's. What a time trip. Thanks.
We had an autoload in our PDP-11/73 at college... but I never got to see inside when it was loading. So thanks for letting me have a peek inside after all these years.
An ibm 2401 could rewind an entire tape in 64 seconds! It did this by pulling the tape out of the vaccuum columns and rewinding extremly fast, then sense the remaining tape by a photo sensor. When the tape got low, it would load back into vaccuum columms and move tape backwards to BOT sensor. If unload was requested it would pull tape up from columns and slowly roll backwards until the tape break sensor detected no more tape and glass door would come down. The IBM 3420 had an autoloader sysyem which the tape had a special band around it. The drive would puff some air into the band and the tape would come out of a little window on the band and would be blown across the heads and then by vaccuum onto take up spool. Then the tape would enter the columns and would advance the tape to the BOT markern then the drive would be ready
Yes! Such amazing tape drives! And you can see our IBM 729 doing a similar high speed rewind here: th-cam.com/video/7Lh4CMz_Z6M/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared&t=839
I knew some of the guys at HP who developed the HP 88780B. They called it "the pizza oven" drive. If I recall, it had a "thumper" to tap the tape before it started moving to prevent "sticktion" i.e. the tape sticking to the head before there was time to develop the air layer between tape and head.
I remember seeing a rack-mounted auto-loading tape drive for the first time when i was 9 or 10 years old.. ooh, its hard to match that level of cool, even today :)
I used to work at a place that had one of the 7000 series tape drives. We called it the little tape drive because it fit in the same 19 inch rack as the HP 3000 CPU. The other tape drives were vacuum column types which were much larger.
That HP 7980 (or similar) drive is a beauty. It’s excellent for logging or reading tapes. However, it’s susceptible to underruns and won’t stream if the block sizes are mismatched. The real problem here, is that wonderful pure dos driver your brilliant friend wrote. If you could grab an old HPUX box, the driver is native in HPUX 10 and 11. I say this because, once you get the driver for the 7980 working, you can get the 7980 to either stream or at least read a lot more tape before stopping by using dd. Remember, dd allows you you change the input block size and output block size. Use a larger block size with dd and the that 7980 will stream!
I paid my way through college maintaining a bunch of Sun 3/280 servers. I spent a lot of evenings swapping 9-track tapes around running the nightly backups.
Started out on Pertecs where you had to manually thread like your second system. But over the years moved on to a 'desktop' unit like your first one that was self-threading. Still pretty fascinating to watch it slowly turn until it 'sees' the end of the tape whip around, then knows to slowly unwind as the air flow 'blows' the tape throught and around. Takes me back. :)
I repaired tape drives like that. Not HP but Cipher, DEC and Fujitsu. Super interesting technology, especially those with vacuum columns. I still have some air pumps and motors... 🙂
Ah, brings back memories of my Computer Operator days - we didn't use HP in any place I worked in, they were all ICL. However, they all pretty much worked the same. We eventually replaced it all and I remember all of the team spending an entire night shift removing all the racks of tapes (about 8 on each arm) then walking out to chuck them in the rubbish skip. Filled about three of them, and the truck had trouble lifting them :-) The auto loaders (we had ones that auto-opened the collar) also benefitted from making a crease on the end of the tape so it sat a little up from the surface, made grabbing the ends easier. Those tapes when thrown away also make excellent bird scarers when used on a vegetable patch as they flickered in the light and made buzzing noise in the wind LOL
After playing with my HP, I discovered not all tapes are equal. 2000AD BASF 6250 cpi. It had problems loading, unloading..reading, writing. At first I thought it might be the machine, so I gave the heads a good cleaning. It helped a little but not much. I switched to a No. 703 6250 Black Watch 3M and everything worked perfectly and faster. Less retry's, faster read and writes, and it always unloaded and loaded without a hitch. My guess is the BASF's were much more deteriorated then the 3M. Both came sealed in original package, unused.
Amazing. Bet operators were relieved by not having to thread tape anymore. Still not as cool as the vacuum column tape drives though. The way that the spools randomly (or rather less predictably) spun in different directions was mesmerizing.
I find it really encouraging and kinda cool that you can still interface a (moderately - ISA slots and parallel ports, still) modern PC to these fine old beasts. Super interesting to see them in action too. Hopefully you can get the actual computer up and running as well now :)
Looking forward to put my hands on one of those, one day... The problem is that are very difficult to find in such an awesome shape and, even if you luckily find some still working, you need further hw/sw to run them as it is supposed to be done. Very interesting video, thanks for sharing!
The clack on the 88780 (HP 7980) tape drive is the tape lifter to keep the tape off the head is fast speed mode. The tape only contacted the head in read or write mode.
I had an internship at a college summer of 2000. I was poking around the basement of an engineering building and found a rack of 9 track tapes. I looked it up and I believe drives were still available new at the time, though I may be mistaken.
Bought the same HP (auto loader) machine. Door would not open so I opened it up. Pulled the boards out, fiddled with the connections and the buttons that open the door.... started to work again. Seems like these machines are tough but they can suffer, like all things from oxidation.
WOW !!! This really brings back memories !!! (Pun incidental) LoL !!! But this is really Cool, if you are into electro-mechanical devices ! I would love to have all of these and a few more IBM units, to round out the lot !! To decorate/functional, my computer room !! The only problem ....... I would have to install a larger service entrance breaker panel for them ! Thanks Marc, this made my day !!! PS: How many folks out there remember the term, EBCDIC ??
Hi Marc: Thanks so much for the message. The bottom hinge on the door is broken, which I will fix, but I am pretty sure the door still closes good since I hear the latch. Besides in the machine, could it be anything on the top Hub since it got some small arm there? Hope it is not anything on the boards inside. thanks and I will sure keep in touch. I sure love these drives and the ones back in the older days of the 1950's and 1960's, the ones you have, and especially the ones you see on sci fi movies or shows. Love the burroughs B205 system used on all of the Irwin Allen shows like Lost In Space. Thanks again Marc. I will try a couple of things. If you think of something, please let me know. Victor:)
+toborthegreat Could be anything. The sensor protruding under the top reel is just the write protect ring sensor. Should not prevent loading even that did not work.
Is it possible to use some sort of software buffering to prevent the HP from tape thrashing? Like Smartdrv does for logical drives in dos. The tape drive is probably not a logically assigned drive i realize... (also keep in mind that dos 6.22 keeps the write cache off by defult unless the /x switch is removed from smartdrv. ) But some sort of lazy write cache should be able to help performance.
+TechBaron: you are in luck, mine just failed but a good Samaritan (from this channel) just sent me the link to a service manual and the procedure he used to revive his. On the big list of repair videos to do.
Fascinating! I have a Qualstar 1052 Drive. It has none of those idler arms of your HP drive. I have nothing to read or write from the drive so I have been thinking of making an arduino to load and save data to it. I wonder what the intention was with that drive. Your hp seems more appropriate for loading and saving records instead of bouncing back and forth like my qualstar.
This was a low cost unit mainly meant for reading tapes from aging mainframes and transferring them to the then new PCs. Also could be used for backups. As you correctly noticed, it's a streamer, as opposed to a much more expensive and complicated start/stop tape, of which the HP 7970 is a fine example. The start/stop tapes became extinct after disks got cheap enough in the late 70's. They were replaced by the cheaper streamers with large memory buffers, which can be very fast if you write or read large chunks at once and never stop. Which is fine, since by then the primary job of became doing backups. Remember that for a very long while, tapes could hold orders of magnitude more data than disks, so tape was the obvious choice for backing up disks. The Qualstar is a streamer, but it is also very slow! So it did not have much redeeming qualities except for the small size and price, which were of primary importance for it's intended PC market.
I worked on the IBM Series 1 versions of the first two, many years ago as a service engineer. The front panels were different, and I guess the interface was somewhat different. Great when they worked, but could be a real pain in the bum when they developed a fault!! It helped if the operator cleaned the heads occasionally!!😂. ( I still have the IBM test tapes and the 8" diagnostic diskettes somewhere! Sad , I know!😊)
Simply spectacular! WOOOOWWW. you took me in the seventies like a time machine. 😅 The vacuum loading blown-up my mind! 😯😯🤩🤩 It seams the tape has its own life...hahahah😂 Where and how did you find those incredible old devices and how do you know how to get them to work? What is your background? You look very young to be so much skilled to use those devices...😲 Very, very interesting! Thanks for sharing! 🙏 Subscribed, of course...🤓
Wow! I love vintage technology, especially audio. I have a reel to reel that I use for most of my recording and music. Those machines are amazing, and now I'm looking for one. Do you think you could give me any pointers?
Hello Marc ..l love your videos. Please do more. I have the Overland unit also...what type of parallel cable connector does it use. I need to purchase it. Thank you for your help.
@@CuriousMarc Hello my friend. Sorry it took so long to reply. Unavoidable. Thank you so much for the info. I am a total novice at this. My Qualstar 1260S is in mint working condition, however today while running it in demo mode, the rubber strip around the take up reel broke. Any known replacement for it. Also, I tried to find an email link for you...or maybe you prefer not to have one (on your webpage). You are very helpful...thank you. I have so many questions....like what program to use to access the drive from PC and where to find it? Thank you.....Mark
Its BYTES per inch as the data is written parallel. Hench 9 track..8 data bits + parity for each byte. Ehe BLOCK also has a CRC that the controller uses to determine a correct read or write. The heads have a read after write to correct any errors on write. Of there was an error, it would back up to the interblock gap and re-write the block, if thw write was unsuccessful, it would erase the block and advance the tape to a new spot and try again. This is a soft write error
I have a Qualstar 1260S in fantastic working condition. I hope I can figure out how to get it operating with a retro computer like a PDP11/70 reproduction. Or an IMSAI 8080 maybe?
I have some tapes on reels salvaged from when the facuklty of physics was moving, what drive would you recommend, I was thinking aboyt Kennedy 9610, becuase it supports 4 densities. Then I would start thinking on how to connect it (SCSI I hope, because pertec scares me) and then how to read the tape (what software). Any suggestions?
@CuriousMarc where can you find these things for sale nowadays? I found just one on eBay for jaw-dropping money - is that the norm or are their cheaper places to buy old RTR tape drives for renovation?
I know thumb drives are technically more efficient both in speed and capacity. But I truly MISS my 6250BPI tape drives that I had on my Perkin Elmer 3250 & my PDP 11/45.
Hi sir! So.... I loved this video and I'm in need of a little guidance. I have probably over 1000 tapes that I need to read and we are already looking into getting the HP (currently 1200 on ebay). So, the hard part! what's the best software to read these? I'm guessing its best to buy a old 486 with DOS/Windows 3.11 for starters and a SCSI controller. Can you help me with the best software to extract data? I'm sure its hard to tell what's on the tape but I would guess its 80% SEGY format. Thanks for your time.
I currently own an Overland Data (San Diego, CA) 9-track desktop drive. Model 3210. Still have old 9-track tapes. Original box too. I have the controller in one of my old PC cases. It think it's an EIDE or such. Does OP want them? [EDITS: included the model number; confirmed original box.]
Okay, I know i'm not the only one that is dying to know the capacity of that tape in KB/MB...I know it's not much and probably couldn't even hold an MP3 or even one hi-res photo taken from a modern camera
The first hard drive I used in 1990 had a capacity of 20MB, so back then even 40MB was a substantial amount for a backup. I used a lot of floppy discs!
Hello there Marc: Thanks so much for the response. I got the machine, but I notice that just plugging in power and putting a tape on without it connected yet to the computer, just all the lights go on but no loading. Wonder if it is a problem inside the machine? There is a bottom platform that I did not screw in at the bottom of the machine yet. Could that be why the machine shows a error and all, because it can fall over without the platform? I know this is a strange question, but looks like the machine can fall over without. Thanks for your help. Looks like one small wire is cut, but I see that since all the pins are not there that it can still work form your email thanks for your help Marc. Victor
+toborthegreat Yes, something probably wrong with your machine. It should be able to load without being connected to anything. The front door must be closed for it to load, that's all.
Better way to thread the 7970: first put the tape arount the takeup spool, Give it a few turns to make sure the tape is secured, then, with only one finger, thread the path arount the capstans and the readwrite head ! Takes 2 seconds !
Very nice video. Thanks for making it and explaining things to us. I wonder why, when it is recording data, the tape drive goes backwards. Is it verifying that the data it just wrote was written correctly? I have an HP DAT72 USB drive since 2007 and every few seconds it makes a grinding noise. I guess it's doing the same thing, because regardless, my backup worked just fine.
You mean the HP 88780? It's because I'm writing antique tape data with many extremely small files on a relatively modern tape drive. This is a fast "streamer" tape and streaming is interrupted at every end of every file. It stops, overshoots the intergap record, and needs to go back to find the IGR and start for the next file. It would also do this if there was a read or write error, but that's not what's happening here. My much older HP 7970E would do a much better job at this: it's a start/stop tape with huge motors and complex servo tension arms. It can stop instantly right in the gap, not needing to back up. Sometimes newer isn't better! Start/stop ability was abandonned (because of the mechanical complexity) as soon as memory buffers got large and inexpensive enough to patch up for the cheaper mechanics. They called them "streamers", but that's marketing speak for "tape that can't stop fast enough". Which was not important for backing up large files, which was their main use. The best start stop tapes are the vacuum column ones, they are mechanical monsters. See my other video on the IBM 729 here th-cam.com/video/7Lh4CMz_Z6M/w-d-xo.html.
Hello my friend. Just want to thank you for a great video on the vintage 9 track machines. I have the Overland 9 track that you have coming in the mail from EBAY. Just wanted to ask you if you can help me get it going? I have my older HP pc that can run DOS. I see that you pointed out that I will not need the Pertec card since this machine has the parallel male plug. This can go right in the back of the pc? Could tell me what software I would need to run this machine? Just to add, the male parallel cable is missing a few pins, would I have to get a schematic for this machine? Thank you very much for your help and love these machines. They are more interesting then today's computers. Take care, Victor
You shoukd be all good. The connector does not have all the pins, that's normal. Jjust plug it in the parallel port at the back of your DOS machine. Try to find the Depot4 software from Overland, send me a private message if you can't get it.
Hello Marc; thanks again for the info. Do you know anyone who repairs the Qualstars or Overland Data units? I have one of each exactly the same as yours but both have issues. Also I have a Digital DEC TSZ07. What is good to clean the tape path with as the Freon recommended is hard to get?
I don’t know anyone that does this off hand. If I were you, I’d look up when the next and nearest Vintage Computer Federation (VCF) meeting is and go and meet people there.
@@CuriousMarc Hello Marc; I was thinking the same thing. I am close to Miami....nice and warm! Maybe they will hold a show near by. Any idea on what to use to clean instead of the Freon?
@@CuriousMarc Thank you Marc...I panicked after reading the maintenance manual....lol. Now if I could find a maintenance manual and schematic for the Overland Data unit.....
Would you be interested in trying to read an old tape I created on an IBM 3420 back in 1984? I'm not sure what's on it, but I do remember the block size was 4101 bytes (presumably 4096 bytes payload + 5 bytes control)
+thelastofthemartians Sure. Contact me off line via personal message. If it was written using Phase Encoding (PE) at 1600 - which in 1984 it should have - I should be able to read it (if it's the older NRZI 800 cpi low-density format, I have an older tape drive that just came in but it's not operational yet). What's on it?
+thelastofthemartians I can't send you a PM either! Probably you don't have a confirmed name on TH-cam? See the instructions from TH-cam Help: support.google.com/youtube/answer/57955?hl=en , it should work but you need a confirmed name before you can use the feature. Just tried to send myself a PM: clicked on my name to go to my channel, clicked on the "about" tab, and I can see the "Send Message" button on the upper right. So everything seems to be fine. Give it another try, let me know if it still doesn't work.
Hey Marc, I'm Victor. Seen your R2D2 on youtube. I have a full size Lost In Space robot, first season and work with the guys that built the chariot. I have a Overland Data OD3201 too that I am trying to figure out why the magnetic door does not work so the machine starts. Sure like to keep in touch with you. Take care, Victor
Hey Marc, love the R2D2 Robots. I have a full size Lost In Space robot that I bring to shows. Hope we can keep in touch. I see you build robots and I like your videos on the 9 track tape units. Trying to get my Overland OD 3601 unit to work. There is a problem with the door latch, it won't stay closed, bounces back for some reason, so I am trying to find the part. Take care Marc, Victor
Being tape, it would be extremely slow to seek to a particular file or record, so it's doubtful that it would be worth the bother even if it's possible to get a driver for a modern OS.
Hi :-) I am new to your channel, what is that computer that you are using to interface with these tape drives? Thanks ;-) will look forward to your reply.
Write errors could do that, but that's not what is happening here. It's because it's a streaming tape drive, not a start/stop one (the much older HP 7970 I demonstrate later is start/stop). Streamers go very fast when writing continuous backups (like a tar archive), or a few large files. But it's terrible for small files: it doesn't have the ability to stop immediately in the inter-record gap. It overshoots, and then backtracks to find the gap and start the next file. What I am trying to write on it is a very old diagnostic tape from the 1960's, and has many, many minuscule executable files (a few kB each at most). And my (very old) computer is not fast enough to feed it the next file so it needs to stop to wait and backtracks before restarting for the next file. A start/stop tape would have no problem with it. But start/stop mechanisms are excessively difficult, heavy and costly to make (see the 7970 huge motors!), so they were abandoned in favor of the simpler "streamers" later in the 80's, when tapes were used mostly for backup and ample buffer memory was added to compensate.
To tl:dr the above comment/rephrase it; Yes, but there is a speed bottleneck at the computer end and the particular drive mechanics can't stop on a dime. That's compounded by the fact that the particular tape image (old diagnostic tape) he's recording with contains many small files. Also, sorry for necro
+douro20 You mean an optical Fiber Channel card? Yes I think I have it, it came with a Xyratex dual optical GBIC interface. Quite an impressive card with a giant amount of buffer memory in it. I removed the card though, I couldn't find a driver for it on Win98 or XP. Do you have one? I thought it was a GbE card, not a FC one, but you must be right. I am not going to find any vintage equipment that connects to that though ;-)
+douro20 You are killing me. I just typed FC on the DOS command line, with the two file names. And it did a "file compare" right there and then! Duh. I felt like an idiot for a moment. Thanks douro20, I had no idea this utility was built-in in DOS!
So if NASA would have not misplace and lost the Appollo mission tapes, we would be able to read the them and extract the ambaded slow scan tv of the moon landing on the last machine??
+RaymondHng Thanks! I keep referring to it as HP 2000, but it's a 21MX. Model HP 2112. Also later known as HP 1000-M. Go figure. See when I inspect it when I just got it here: th-cam.com/video/NJoXFdUBSeQ/w-d-xo.html . Have not turned it on yet... Jay West has the only fully working HP 2000 Basic system I know of.
+CuriousMarc Actually, I have several working HP2000/Access Timeshared BASIC systems :) For years I've had the only running ones - but I do know for sure that at least two other collectors are actively working on getting their own HP2K system up, and one of them is fairly close. So hopefully soon there will be more than mine! And by the way - HP2000 doesn't refer to a computer really, it more closely refers to the operating system.
Lovely machines, built to last for many years, a joy to see.
That auto-loading was magical. Some people had fun designing that :D
When I was in college, I worked in a data center for a bank as a mainframe operator on the evening/night shift. They used an NCR mainframe with 9-track tape drives similar to the 'granddaddy' one you showed. Lest you think I am positively ancient, this was from 1997 to 2001. Like most banks, their approach to technology was simple: CAN it be done without buying anything new? Then you don't get anything new. Doesn't matter how old and busted it is. While I worked there, we got a call from a restaurant in another part of the country. Turns out, they were the ONLY other people in the entire nation still using the model of mainframe we were. And they were getting rid of it and replacing it with a PC. They gave it to us for free if we would haul the monstrous thing away.
The tape drives in particular were a nightmare. They had the vacuum-driven autoloading, which is totally awesome... when it works. Unfortunately, the primary tape drive we used had a broken seal so could not get a proper vacuum. And it squealed like mad. It was positively deafening in the mainframe room where I primarily worked. Most of the time, I had to thread the tape manually, but had to let it try to do it auto a few times before it gave up and let me do it by hand. The drive itself was much larger than the one you showed, about 5 feet tall (but the same width and the same vertical layout). Rather than a cabinet door on a hinge, it had a neat sliding clear plastic 'blast shield' type thing that would open/close as necessary. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they were still running that mainframe and those tape drives. Short of a catastrophic failure like the thing bursting into flames, the bank simply was not willing to upgrade. They got bought by another bank chain and everyone said they were going to close the separate data center and merge all the systems into the purchasers existing data center... but when I ran into an ex-coworker 5 or 6 years later, he said they gave up on migrating it because dealing with all the old software was just too much...
pop over the sysadmin subreddit sometime... your story would make an interesting read!
Naaa man post it on /g/ plebbit’s for loserz
How is the bank now?
If it aint broke, dont fix it.
Imagine getting that for free!!
Ok, that auto-load thing was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen on a tape drive! Ingenious!!
The IBM 3420 was MUCH better at autoload aNd was much FASTER at loading
I think I like the big noisy auto loading drive. The relay ticking when it changes directions makes for a good ambience.
I love this stuff. I wish more people made videos like this.
The mechanics of the 8878OB (the first one, using vacuum to load the tape) run so smooth and seem built to last for eternity, very impressive, I'm loving it! I'm also thrilled that there are people out there, scattered over the world, who have a fundamental understanding on how data data reading and writing is controlled via the I/O on these machines on which they are able to write software to run those machines from a (much) later and very different platform and interface than initially thought to work with. I think that that ability is very unique and I'm happy that these people are in contact with another.
I had *BOTH* of these very devices, and used them regularly for backup, and to distribute commercial software back in the 1980's. What a time trip. Thanks.
We had an autoload in our PDP-11/73 at college... but I never got to see inside when it was loading. So thanks for letting me have a peek inside after all these years.
An ibm 2401 could rewind an entire tape in 64 seconds! It did this by pulling the tape out of the vaccuum columns and rewinding extremly fast, then sense the remaining tape by a photo sensor. When the tape got low, it would load back into vaccuum columms and move tape backwards to BOT sensor. If unload was requested it would pull tape up from columns and slowly roll backwards until the tape break sensor detected no more tape and glass door would come down.
The IBM 3420 had an autoloader sysyem which the tape had a special band around it. The drive would puff some air into the band and the tape would come out of a little window on the band and would be blown across the heads and then by vaccuum onto take up spool. Then the tape would enter the columns and would advance the tape to the BOT markern then the drive would be ready
Yes! Such amazing tape drives! And you can see our IBM 729 doing a similar high speed rewind here: th-cam.com/video/7Lh4CMz_Z6M/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared&t=839
Using vintage peripherals on modern computers is cool! Great job!
this reminds me on my childhood... these machines are just sooo beautiful :)
I knew some of the guys at HP who developed the HP 88780B. They called it "the pizza oven" drive. If I recall, it had a "thumper" to tap the tape before it started moving to prevent "sticktion" i.e. the tape sticking to the head before there was time to develop the air layer between tape and head.
I remember seeing the autoload on some DEC VAX/OpenVMS systems in late 80's. Very reliable. Takes me back.
I remember seeing a rack-mounted auto-loading tape drive for the first time when i was 9 or 10 years old.. ooh, its hard to match that level of cool, even today :)
I used to work at a place that had one of the 7000 series tape drives. We called it the little tape drive because it fit in the same 19 inch rack as the HP 3000 CPU. The other tape drives were vacuum column types which were much larger.
I remember being shown one of those autoloaders in 1986 a as 16 year old repair apprentice - very impressive.
i remember using the 7970E on an HP2000F minicomputer in the mid-1970s as a high school student
That HP 7980 (or similar) drive is a beauty. It’s excellent for logging or reading tapes. However, it’s susceptible to underruns and won’t stream if the block sizes are mismatched.
The real problem here, is that wonderful pure dos driver your brilliant friend wrote.
If you could grab an old HPUX box, the driver is native in HPUX 10 and 11.
I say this because, once you get the driver for the 7980 working, you can get the 7980 to either stream or at least read a lot more tape before stopping by using dd.
Remember, dd allows you you change the input block size and output block size.
Use a larger block size with dd and the that 7980 will stream!
This was really fun to watch... These machines are before my time but it's really interesting to see how it used to be.
That was just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
I paid my way through college maintaining a bunch of Sun 3/280 servers. I spent a lot of evenings swapping 9-track tapes around running the nightly backups.
What did you think of it?
Started out on Pertecs where you had to manually thread like your second system. But over the years moved on to a 'desktop' unit like your first one that was self-threading. Still pretty fascinating to watch it slowly turn until it 'sees' the end of the tape whip around, then knows to slowly unwind as the air flow 'blows' the tape throught and around. Takes me back. :)
Something about this is just so futuristic, even in the modern age.
I repaired tape drives like that. Not HP but Cipher, DEC and Fujitsu. Super interesting technology, especially those with vacuum columns. I still have some air pumps and motors... 🙂
Ah, brings back memories of my Computer Operator days - we didn't use HP in any place I worked in, they were all ICL. However, they all pretty much worked the same. We eventually replaced it all and I remember all of the team spending an entire night shift removing all the racks of tapes (about 8 on each arm) then walking out to chuck them in the rubbish skip. Filled about three of them, and the truck had trouble lifting them :-) The auto loaders (we had ones that auto-opened the collar) also benefitted from making a crease on the end of the tape so it sat a little up from the surface, made grabbing the ends easier. Those tapes when thrown away also make excellent bird scarers when used on a vegetable patch as they flickered in the light and made buzzing noise in the wind LOL
Can you imagine being able to save that to this day, how much nerds like us would be clamoring to get them??
This is so satisfying to watch
After playing with my HP, I discovered not all tapes are equal. 2000AD BASF 6250 cpi. It had problems loading, unloading..reading, writing. At first I thought it might be the machine, so I gave the heads a good cleaning. It helped a little but not much. I switched to a No. 703 6250 Black Watch 3M and everything worked perfectly and faster. Less retry's, faster read and writes, and it always unloaded and loaded without a hitch. My guess is the BASF's were much more deteriorated then the 3M. Both came sealed in original package, unused.
Amazing. Bet operators were relieved by not having to thread tape anymore.
Still not as cool as the vacuum column tape drives though. The way that the spools randomly (or rather less predictably) spun in different directions was mesmerizing.
SCSI aka Skuzzy. Brings back a lot of memories. Not all good. Not all bad.
I find it really encouraging and kinda cool that you can still interface a (moderately - ISA slots and parallel ports, still) modern PC to these fine old beasts. Super interesting to see them in action too. Hopefully you can get the actual computer up and running as well now :)
All it takes is a guy with a goal to write drivers for these too
Looking forward to put my hands on one of those, one day... The problem is that are very difficult to find in such an awesome shape and, even if you luckily find some still working, you need further hw/sw to run them as it is supposed to be done. Very interesting video, thanks for sharing!
Very interesting! I'd love to see one of these mounted as a physical drive on a modern PC.
The clack on the 88780 (HP 7980) tape drive is the tape lifter to keep the tape off the head is fast speed mode. The tape only contacted the head in read or write mode.
That is the coolest screen on that first machine
Amazing that it still worcks
Wow! Vacuum loading is so cool!
I had a computer that I always said that it sounded like a vacuum... Your auto loader actually is a vacuum!
tout simplement magique ! j'adore !!
I had an internship at a college summer of 2000. I was poking around the basement of an engineering building and found a rack of 9 track tapes. I looked it up and I believe drives were still available new at the time, though I may be mistaken.
Bought the same HP (auto loader) machine. Door would not open so I opened it up. Pulled the boards out, fiddled with the connections and the buttons that open the door.... started to work again. Seems like these machines are tough but they can suffer, like all things from oxidation.
I just love tape drives :).
WOW !!! This really brings back memories !!! (Pun incidental) LoL !!! But this is really Cool, if you are into electro-mechanical devices ! I would love to have all of these and a few more IBM units, to round out the lot !! To decorate/functional, my computer room !! The only problem ....... I would have to install a larger service entrance breaker panel for them ! Thanks Marc, this made my day !!! PS: How many folks out there remember the term, EBCDIC ??
Good video. Love your toys! Very nice. Steven
Great video, mate! thanks for sharing...
Those are very nice machines.
Hi Marc: Thanks so much for the message. The bottom hinge on the door is broken, which I will fix, but I am pretty sure the door still closes good since I hear the latch. Besides in the machine, could it be anything on the top Hub since it got some small arm there? Hope it is not anything on the boards inside. thanks and I will sure keep in touch. I sure love these drives and the ones back in the older days of the 1950's and 1960's, the ones you have, and especially the ones you see on sci fi movies or shows. Love the burroughs B205 system used on all of the Irwin Allen shows like Lost In Space. Thanks again Marc. I will try a couple of things. If you think of something, please let me know. Victor:)
+toborthegreat Could be anything. The sensor protruding under the top reel is just the write protect ring sensor. Should not prevent loading even that did not work.
Is it possible to use some sort of software buffering to prevent the HP from tape thrashing? Like Smartdrv does for logical drives in dos. The tape drive is probably not a logically assigned drive i realize... (also keep in mind that dos 6.22 keeps the write cache off by defult unless the /x switch is removed from smartdrv. ) But some sort of lazy write cache should be able to help performance.
Hey please do another video with the overland please..i love that thing..brings me back to the Travann and qic 80 days man
+TechBaron: you are in luck, mine just failed but a good Samaritan (from this channel) just sent me the link to a service manual and the procedure he used to revive his. On the big list of repair videos to do.
Fascinating! I have a Qualstar 1052 Drive. It has none of those idler arms of your HP drive. I have nothing to read or write from the drive so I have been thinking of making an arduino to load and save data to it. I wonder what the intention was with that drive. Your hp seems more appropriate for loading and saving records instead of bouncing back and forth like my qualstar.
This was a low cost unit mainly meant for reading tapes from aging mainframes and transferring them to the then new PCs. Also could be used for backups. As you correctly noticed, it's a streamer, as opposed to a much more expensive and complicated start/stop tape, of which the HP 7970 is a fine example. The start/stop tapes became extinct after disks got cheap enough in the late 70's. They were replaced by the cheaper streamers with large memory buffers, which can be very fast if you write or read large chunks at once and never stop. Which is fine, since by then the primary job of became doing backups. Remember that for a very long while, tapes could hold orders of magnitude more data than disks, so tape was the obvious choice for backing up disks. The Qualstar is a streamer, but it is also very slow! So it did not have much redeeming qualities except for the small size and price, which were of primary importance for it's intended PC market.
I suppose it would be at least good to make an interface with an Arduino and use as a drive for my Rc2014 Z80 computer.
I worked on the IBM Series 1 versions of the first two, many years ago as a service engineer. The front panels were different, and I guess the interface was somewhat different. Great when they worked, but could be a real pain in the bum when they developed a fault!! It helped if the operator cleaned the heads occasionally!!😂. ( I still have the IBM test tapes and the 8" diagnostic diskettes somewhere! Sad , I know!😊)
Simply spectacular! WOOOOWWW. you took me in the seventies like a time machine. 😅
The vacuum loading blown-up my mind! 😯😯🤩🤩 It seams the tape has its own life...hahahah😂
Where and how did you find those incredible old devices and how do you know how to get them to work?
What is your background? You look very young to be so much skilled to use those devices...😲
Very, very interesting! Thanks for sharing! 🙏
Subscribed, of course...🤓
I want one so badly
I like the vintage green office chair
Wow! I love vintage technology, especially audio. I have a reel to reel that I use for most of my recording and music. Those machines are amazing, and now I'm looking for one. Do you think you could give me any pointers?
That's really neat.
Hello Marc ..l love your videos. Please do more. I have the Overland unit also...what type of parallel cable connector does it use. I need to purchase it. Thank you for your help.
The doc and software for the Overland is on my website: www.curiousmarc.com/computing/overland-tape-drive
@@CuriousMarc Hello my friend. Sorry it took so long to reply. Unavoidable. Thank you so much for the info. I am a total novice at this. My Qualstar 1260S is in mint working condition, however today while running it in demo mode, the rubber strip around the take up reel broke. Any known replacement for it. Also, I tried to find an email link for you...or maybe you prefer not to have one (on your webpage). You are very helpful...thank you. I have so many questions....like what program to use to access the drive from PC and where to find it? Thank you.....Mark
@2:29 Should be: 6250 BITS per inch
Awesome demo on some amazing equipment!
Its BYTES per inch as the data is written parallel. Hench 9 track..8 data bits + parity for each byte. Ehe BLOCK also has a CRC that the controller uses to determine a correct read or write. The heads have a read after write to correct any errors on write. Of there was an error, it would back up to the interblock gap and re-write the block, if thw write was unsuccessful, it would erase the block and advance the tape to a new spot and try again. This is a soft write error
I have a Qualstar 1260S in fantastic working condition. I hope I can figure out how to get it operating with a retro computer like a PDP11/70 reproduction. Or an IMSAI 8080 maybe?
I have some tapes on reels salvaged from when the facuklty of physics was moving, what drive would you recommend, I was thinking aboyt Kennedy 9610, becuase it supports 4 densities. Then I would start thinking on how to connect it (SCSI I hope, because pertec scares me) and then how to read the tape (what software).
Any suggestions?
@CuriousMarc where can you find these things for sale nowadays? I found just one on eBay for jaw-dropping money - is that the norm or are their cheaper places to buy old RTR tape drives for renovation?
The best encryption by obfuscation machine 🤣👍
I know thumb drives are technically more efficient both in speed and capacity. But I truly MISS my 6250BPI tape drives that I had on my Perkin Elmer 3250 & my PDP 11/45.
Hi sir! So.... I loved this video and I'm in need of a little guidance. I have probably over 1000 tapes that I need to read and we are already looking into getting the HP (currently 1200 on ebay). So, the hard part! what's the best software to read these? I'm guessing its best to buy a old 486 with DOS/Windows 3.11 for starters and a SCSI controller. Can you help me with the best software to extract data? I'm sure its hard to tell what's on the tape but I would guess its 80% SEGY format. Thanks for your time.
used these HP drives back in the 90s when i was with Elf
I currently own an Overland Data (San Diego, CA) 9-track desktop drive. Model 3210. Still have old 9-track tapes. Original box too. I have the controller in one of my old PC cases. It think it's an EIDE or such. Does OP want them? [EDITS: included the model number; confirmed original box.]
Okay, I know i'm not the only one that is dying to know the capacity of that tape in KB/MB...I know it's not much and probably couldn't even hold an MP3 or even one hi-res photo taken from a modern camera
About 40 MB for the older 1600 cpi density tape drive (the HP 7970), and about 140 MB for all the others when running in 6250 cpi density.
The first hard drive I used in 1990 had a capacity of 20MB, so back then even 40MB was a substantial amount for a backup. I used a lot of floppy discs!
Tapes can have unlimited storage capacity as a file can span multiple tapes (multi volume files) but each tape could hold about 250mb per reel
Very interesting.
judging by the way that the tape runs in a Forward /Reverse motion, I Assume that they are Random Access?
woulda loved to have a vacuum auto audio reel tape loader
Hello there Marc: Thanks so much for the response. I got the machine, but I notice that just plugging in power and putting a tape on without it connected yet to the computer, just all the lights go on but no loading. Wonder if it is a problem inside the machine? There is a bottom platform that I did not screw in at the bottom of the machine yet. Could that be why the machine shows a error and all, because it can fall over without the platform? I know this is a strange question, but looks like the machine can fall over without. Thanks for your help. Looks like one small wire is cut, but I see that since all the pins are not there that it can still work form your email thanks for your help Marc. Victor
+toborthegreat Yes, something probably wrong with your machine. It should be able to load without being connected to anything. The front door must be closed for it to load, that's all.
Top Video 👍👍👍👍👍
Better way to thread the 7970: first put the tape arount the takeup spool, Give it a few turns to make sure the tape is secured, then, with only one finger, thread the path arount the capstans and the readwrite head ! Takes 2 seconds !
Very nice video. Thanks for making it and explaining things to us.
I wonder why, when it is recording data, the tape drive goes backwards. Is it verifying that the data it just wrote was written correctly?
I have an HP DAT72 USB drive since 2007 and every few seconds it makes a grinding noise. I guess it's doing the same thing, because regardless, my backup worked just fine.
You mean the HP 88780? It's because I'm writing antique tape data with many extremely small files on a relatively modern tape drive. This is a fast "streamer" tape and streaming is interrupted at every end of every file. It stops, overshoots the intergap record, and needs to go back to find the IGR and start for the next file. It would also do this if there was a read or write error, but that's not what's happening here. My much older HP 7970E would do a much better job at this: it's a start/stop tape with huge motors and complex servo tension arms. It can stop instantly right in the gap, not needing to back up. Sometimes newer isn't better! Start/stop ability was abandonned (because of the mechanical complexity) as soon as memory buffers got large and inexpensive enough to patch up for the cheaper mechanics. They called them "streamers", but that's marketing speak for "tape that can't stop fast enough". Which was not important for backing up large files, which was their main use. The best start stop tapes are the vacuum column ones, they are mechanical monsters. See my other video on the IBM 729 here th-cam.com/video/7Lh4CMz_Z6M/w-d-xo.html.
No, its the HP DW027A:
h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/05/DW027A.htm
sorry, curiosiy: what's the price for a (also not working) piece of computer's history like this? :) thanks so much!
nice video
Hello my friend. Just want to thank you for a great video on the vintage 9 track machines. I have the Overland 9 track that you have coming in the mail from EBAY. Just wanted to ask you if you can help me get it going? I have my older HP pc that can run DOS. I see that you pointed out that I will not need the Pertec card since this machine has the parallel male plug. This can go right in the back of the pc? Could tell me what software I would need to run this machine? Just to add, the male parallel cable is missing a few pins, would I have to get a schematic for this machine? Thank you very much for your help and love these machines. They are more interesting then today's computers. Take care, Victor
You shoukd be all good. The connector does not have all the pins, that's normal. Jjust plug it in the parallel port at the back of your DOS machine. Try to find the Depot4 software from Overland, send me a private message if you can't get it.
Hello Marc; thanks again for the info. Do you know anyone who repairs the Qualstars or Overland Data units? I have one of each exactly the same as yours but both have issues. Also I have a Digital DEC TSZ07. What is good to clean the tape path with as the Freon recommended is hard to get?
I don’t know anyone that does this off hand. If I were you, I’d look up when the next and nearest Vintage Computer Federation (VCF) meeting is and go and meet people there.
@@CuriousMarc Hello Marc; I was thinking the same thing. I am close to Miami....nice and warm! Maybe they will hold a show near by. Any idea on what to use to clean instead of the Freon?
I use isopropyl alcohol.
@@CuriousMarc Thank you Marc...I panicked after reading the maintenance manual....lol. Now if I could find a maintenance manual and schematic for the Overland Data unit.....
@@markohara5146 Let me know if you ever find it. It’s Overland Data Manual 104075… Could never get a hold of it!
Would you be interested in trying to read an old tape I created on an IBM 3420 back in 1984? I'm not sure what's on it, but I do remember the block size was 4101 bytes (presumably 4096 bytes payload + 5 bytes control)
+thelastofthemartians Sure. Contact me off line via personal message. If it was written using Phase Encoding (PE) at 1600 - which in 1984 it should have - I should be able to read it (if it's the older NRZI 800 cpi low-density format, I have an older tape drive that just came in but it's not operational yet). What's on it?
+CuriousMarc hmmm...I spent 30 mins looking but I couldn't see a way to PM you
+thelastofthemartians I can't send you a PM either! Probably you don't have a confirmed name on TH-cam? See the instructions from TH-cam Help: support.google.com/youtube/answer/57955?hl=en , it should work but you need a confirmed name before you can use the feature.
Just tried to send myself a PM: clicked on my name to go to my channel, clicked on the "about" tab, and I can see the "Send Message" button on the upper right. So everything seems to be fine. Give it another try, let me know if it still doesn't work.
+CuriousMarc Got your PM, you fixed it.
What's the slim tape drive I'm the video called at 13:35
Streaming 9-track tape drive.
I have 2 working HP88780B Drives, just not the know how to get them working on todays computers :( Have the cable and the boards also.
How many data could be stored in It?
Hey Marc, I'm Victor. Seen your R2D2 on youtube. I have a full size Lost In Space robot, first season and work with the guys that built the chariot. I have a Overland Data OD3201 too that I am trying to figure out why the magnetic door does not work so the machine starts. Sure like to keep in touch with you. Take care, Victor
Hey Marc, love the R2D2 Robots. I have a full size Lost In Space robot that I bring to shows. Hope we can keep in touch. I see you build robots and I like your videos on the 9 track tape units. Trying to get my Overland OD 3601 unit to work. There is a problem with the door latch, it won't stay closed, bounces back for some reason, so I am trying to find the part. Take care Marc, Victor
I have an old backup tape drive, and I'm wondering can they be used as a disk drive?
It's an internal PC based drive by Iomega.
Being tape, it would be extremely slow to seek to a particular file or record, so it's doubtful that it would be worth the bother even if it's possible to get a driver for a modern OS.
Tapes are serial type access, so not much good as a disk type access
came into computers on the very tail end of this .
Very last shot.... an HDPE write-enable ring.... sigh! ..... that takes me back!
How large was the loaded data?
I have that Qualstar drive.
Hi :-) I am new to your channel, what is that computer that you are using to interface with these tape drives? Thanks ;-) will look forward to your reply.
It's a DolchPAC 65. See this video here th-cam.com/video/gETTwDHAl_w/w-d-xo.html
Why does it go back and forth like that? Wouldn't it be faster to just write the files in one shot without reversing the tape?
I think it's error checking
Write errors could do that, but that's not what is happening here. It's because it's a streaming tape drive, not a start/stop one (the much older HP 7970 I demonstrate later is start/stop). Streamers go very fast when writing continuous backups (like a tar archive), or a few large files. But it's terrible for small files: it doesn't have the ability to stop immediately in the inter-record gap. It overshoots, and then backtracks to find the gap and start the next file. What I am trying to write on it is a very old diagnostic tape from the 1960's, and has many, many minuscule executable files (a few kB each at most). And my (very old) computer is not fast enough to feed it the next file so it needs to stop to wait and backtracks before restarting for the next file. A start/stop tape would have no problem with it. But start/stop mechanisms are excessively difficult, heavy and costly to make (see the 7970 huge motors!), so they were abandoned in favor of the simpler "streamers" later in the 80's, when tapes were used mostly for backup and ample buffer memory was added to compensate.
To tl:dr the above comment/rephrase it; Yes, but there is a speed bottleneck at the computer end and the particular drive mechanics can't stop on a dime. That's compounded by the fact that the particular tape image (old diagnostic tape) he's recording with contains many small files.
Also, sorry for necro
"Unlooad! 🎵”
using mt-st package in modern linux distro 😀
Don't have FC on the Dolch portable?
+douro20 You mean an optical Fiber Channel card? Yes I think I have it, it came with a Xyratex dual optical GBIC interface. Quite an impressive card with a giant amount of buffer memory in it. I removed the card though, I couldn't find a driver for it on Win98 or XP. Do you have one? I thought it was a GbE card, not a FC one, but you must be right. I am not going to find any vintage equipment that connects to that though ;-)
+CuriousMarc No, I mean the FC or File Compare program.
Ah, no, thanks, I have to look that up. I use AptDiff on XP, but I was too lazy to load it on the Dolch...
+douro20 You are killing me. I just typed FC on the DOS command line, with the two file names. And it did a "file compare" right there and then! Duh. I felt like an idiot for a moment. Thanks douro20, I had no idea this utility was built-in in DOS!
+CuriousMarc After decades of using Windows, it's easy to forget how much can be done with a DOS!
How does it not snap the tape?
These are not cassette tapes haha there is not much tension on them either
So if NASA would have not misplace and lost the Appollo mission tapes, we would be able to read the them and extract the ambaded slow scan tv of the moon landing on the last machine??
I workt whit the hp autoloader in the -90 on a hp3000 whit MPE/XL
HP 2000? The entire source code for TREK 73 written in HP BASIC can be found at www.kermitmurray.com/trek73/hp-2000-basic-code/
+RaymondHng Thanks! I keep referring to it as HP 2000, but it's a 21MX. Model HP 2112. Also later known as HP 1000-M. Go figure. See when I inspect it when I just got it here: th-cam.com/video/NJoXFdUBSeQ/w-d-xo.html . Have not turned it on yet... Jay West has the only fully working HP 2000 Basic system I know of.
+CuriousMarc Actually, I have several working HP2000/Access Timeshared BASIC systems :) For years I've had the only running ones - but I do know for sure that at least two other collectors are actively working on getting their own HP2K system up, and one of them is fairly close. So hopefully soon there will be more than mine! And by the way - HP2000 doesn't refer to a computer really, it more closely refers to the operating system.
Which lunchbox pc is that?
It’s a Dolch PAC65. Several videos on it on the channel.
@@CuriousMarc thank you very much for the info
excellente'
What kind of computer is that?
It's a Dolch. Video here: th-cam.com/video/gETTwDHAl_w/w-d-xo.html
Один из этих стримеров практически идентичен моему монстру СМ-5309.