Re: wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper seeking advice on building a nationwide network

[bmanning () vacation karoshi com]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:14:59AM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:32:04 +0200, Randy Bush said:
>
> > you left out one connection via a chevy full of hollerith cards and the
> > second a canoe full of 7 track tape in waterproof containers.
>
> Does anybody actually *have* a functional 7 track drive?  I remember seeing a
> story on PBS (may have been a Nova episode) where they discussed the fact that
> NASA had literally thousands of 7 track tapes of telemetry data and no way to
> read them because their last 7 track drive had died, and IBM had no 7 track
> read/write heads left either...
>
> (I admit we still have a rack of 9-track tapes in ez-loader seals in our tape
> library, though we got rid of our last IBM 3420 about a decade ago. I think
> most of them are tapes we've lost track of ownership info, and don't dare
> dispose of in case the owner turns up.. ;)

        I know of two sites that have them and there are folks who keep
        older kit running.  its not cheap and they are not high volume.

/bill