Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Seeking Applesauce FDC testimonials - museum use
Ok. That's a tough nut to crack. -Dave On 1/27/23 11:59, drummy wrote:
The Univac tapes are 7 track.
Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
-------- Original message -------- From: Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Date: 1/27/23 11:41 AM (GMT-05:00) To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Dave McGuire <mcguire@neurotica.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Seeking Applesauce FDC testimonials - museum use
On 1/27/23 11:40, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I welcome a bit of illumination to help me form a vision of the totality of the problems. On the tape subject, one practical need I'd like to crack this year is archiving the UNIVAC 1219 tapes. Lets start a new thread on tapes if anyone has more to offer at this time.
We do a lot of tape archiving at LSSM, and can help with some of this.
Are the Univac's tapes 7-track, or 9?
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
The best option for some of those formats is Len Shustek's readtape — https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape It does require a 16-channel Saleae Logic Pro (perhaps an 8-channel would be sufficient for 7-track tape). I have a 16-channel — got it at launch when these cost around $500. Nowadays it costs $1400 (perhaps with a discount available for institutional use, but even there it would likely be around $1000). If someone is interested in working through the documentation to figure out how to do this with the Univac or other machines at the museum, and then utilizing my unit to attempt sometime later this year, please contact me off-list. Thanks! David
On Jan 27, 2023, at 12:06 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Ok. That's a tough nut to crack.
-Dave
On 1/27/23 11:59, drummy wrote:
The Univac tapes are 7 track. Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Date: 1/27/23 11:41 AM (GMT-05:00) To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Dave McGuire <mcguire@neurotica.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Seeking Applesauce FDC testimonials - museum use On 1/27/23 11:40, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I welcome a bit of illumination to help me form a vision of the totality of the problems. On the tape subject, one practical need I'd like to crack this year is archiving the UNIVAC 1219 tapes. Lets start a new thread on tapes if anyone has more to offer at this time. We do a lot of tape archiving at LSSM, and can help with some of this. Are the Univac's tapes 7-track, or 9? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
We've done something similar to this for 9-track tapes, but the problem with 7-track tapes is the lack of available drives. 7-track tapes have different track widths and spacing. While we've not actually tried it, I don't see a way that a 9-track head would read a 7-track tape. -Dave On 1/27/23 12:14, David Ryskalczyk wrote:
The best option for some of those formats is Len Shustek's readtape — https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape <https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape>
It does require a 16-channel Saleae Logic Pro (perhaps an 8-channel would be sufficient for 7-track tape). I have a 16-channel — got it at launch when these cost around $500. Nowadays it costs $1400 (perhaps with a discount available for institutional use, but even there it would likely be around $1000).
If someone is interested in working through the documentation to figure out how to do this with the Univac or other machines at the museum, and then utilizing my unit to attempt sometime later this year, please contact me off-list.
Thanks! David
On Jan 27, 2023, at 12:06 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Ok. That's a tough nut to crack.
-Dave
On 1/27/23 11:59, drummy wrote:
The Univac tapes are 7 track. Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Date: 1/27/23 11:41 AM (GMT-05:00) To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Dave McGuire <mcguire@neurotica.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Seeking Applesauce FDC testimonials - museum use On 1/27/23 11:40, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I welcome a bit of illumination to help me form a vision of the totality of the problems. On the tape subject, one practical need I'd like to crack this year is archiving the UNIVAC 1219 tapes. Lets start a new thread on tapes if anyone has more to offer at this time. We do a lot of tape archiving at LSSM, and can help with some of this. Are the Univac's tapes 7-track, or 9? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Yes, a drive with a 7-track head, or a 7-track head for a swappable drive such as the Qualstar 1052, would be needed. That said — doesn't the Univac that is present in the museum itself have a working 7-track drive? David
On Jan 27, 2023, at 12:19 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
We've done something similar to this for 9-track tapes, but the problem with 7-track tapes is the lack of available drives.
7-track tapes have different track widths and spacing. While we've not actually tried it, I don't see a way that a 9-track head would read a 7-track tape.
-Dave
On 1/27/23 12:14, David Ryskalczyk wrote:
The best option for some of those formats is Len Shustek's readtape — https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape <https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape> It does require a 16-channel Saleae Logic Pro (perhaps an 8-channel would be sufficient for 7-track tape). I have a 16-channel — got it at launch when these cost around $500. Nowadays it costs $1400 (perhaps with a discount available for institutional use, but even there it would likely be around $1000). If someone is interested in working through the documentation to figure out how to do this with the Univac or other machines at the museum, and then utilizing my unit to attempt sometime later this year, please contact me off-list. Thanks! David
On Jan 27, 2023, at 12:06 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Ok. That's a tough nut to crack.
-Dave
On 1/27/23 11:59, drummy wrote:
The Univac tapes are 7 track. Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Date: 1/27/23 11:41 AM (GMT-05:00) To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Dave McGuire <mcguire@neurotica.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Seeking Applesauce FDC testimonials - museum use On 1/27/23 11:40, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I welcome a bit of illumination to help me form a vision of the totality of the problems. On the tape subject, one practical need I'd like to crack this year is archiving the UNIVAC 1219 tapes. Lets start a new thread on tapes if anyone has more to offer at this time. We do a lot of tape archiving at LSSM, and can help with some of this. Are the Univac's tapes 7-track, or 9? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 1/27/23 12:21, David Ryskalczyk wrote:
Yes, a drive with a 7-track head, or a 7-track head for a swappable drive such as the Qualstar 1052, would be needed.
...then you have to find a 7-track head. ;)
That said — doesn't the Univac that is present in the museum itself have a working 7-track drive?
Possibly. I'd not want to set up a tape imaging station on an active museum exhibit, but perhaps it could be pressed into service just to read that set of tapes. I tend to think in terms of permanent equipment; that's the standpoint my comments come from. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 12:21:41PM -0500, David Ryskalczyk via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Yes, a drive with a 7-track head, or a 7-track head for a swappable drive such as the Qualstar 1052, would be needed.
That said — doesn't the Univac that is present in the museum itself have a working 7-track drive?
Last I heard it wasn't working well. Is my information out of date? Don't know if it was the drive or control. People working with the Univac had also made modern interfaces to the Univac NTDS interfaces so might be able to write a "simple" program to dump tapes through that if drives are working. There was some discussion on using head from IBM 3480/3490? to read 7 tracks. Couldn't find what I remembered online and not cheap to acquire. I did recently pick up a 7 track head but its in bad shape so not sure if it is usable.
On 1/27/2023 12:42 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 12:21:41PM -0500, David Ryskalczyk via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Yes, a drive with a 7-track head, or a 7-track head for a swappable drive such as the Qualstar 1052, would be needed.
That said — doesn't the Univac that is present in the museum itself have a working 7-track drive?
Last I heard it wasn't working well. Is my information out of date? Don't know if it was the drive or control.
People working with the Univac had also made modern interfaces to the Univac NTDS interfaces so might be able to write a "simple" program to dump tapes through that if drives are working.
There was some discussion on using head from IBM 3480/3490? to read 7 tracks. Couldn't find what I remembered online and not cheap to acquire. I did recently pick up a 7 track head but its in bad shape so not sure if it is usable.
Just had ATR overhaul a head for an Ampex ATR-101 recorder - might be an option for your 7 track head. https://atrservice.com/
I sent this on the old thread The Univac 1219 tapes are: 7 track/ 556 bits per inch/ redundant format (3 data bits written twice across the head)/ Modulus 3 (three 6 bit data words transmitted to the computer as one 18 bit word. Also have a few 1218 NTDS tapes that I think were 200 bpi/ non redundant. I don't know of anyone with an operational 7 track machine. We don't want to place those tapes on the drive unless we have the machine up to the point we can copy tapes. My wife cant be left alone so I can't come up now. Might be a chance in the spring if I can get her daughter to stay long enough. I did write an untested program to read through a tape and dump files in Paper Tape format through my interface box on another channel but that would be if we could not get two handlers working. There is a super copy program (Super Dup Mod) on one of the tapes that tries 7 times to read a record ( FWD and REVERSE with normal, High and low bias. It also had the ability to patch the copy during the copy process. Duane On 1/27/2023 12:46 PM, Martin Flynn via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 1/27/2023 12:42 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 12:21:41PM -0500, David Ryskalczyk via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Yes, a drive with a 7-track head, or a 7-track head for a swappable drive such as the Qualstar 1052, would be needed.
That said — doesn't the Univac that is present in the museum itself have a working 7-track drive?
Last I heard it wasn't working well. Is my information out of date? Don't know if it was the drive or control.
People working with the Univac had also made modern interfaces to the Univac NTDS interfaces so might be able to write a "simple" program to dump tapes through that if drives are working.
There was some discussion on using head from IBM 3480/3490? to read 7 tracks. Couldn't find what I remembered online and not cheap to acquire. I did recently pick up a 7 track head but its in bad shape so not sure if it is usable.
Just had ATR overhaul a head for an Ampex ATR-101 recorder - might be an option for your 7 track head.
-- Duane Craps sdɐɹɔ ǝuɐnp On 1/27/2023 12:46 PM, Martin Flynn via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 1/27/2023 12:42 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 12:21:41PM -0500, David Ryskalczyk via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Yes, a drive with a 7-track head, or a 7-track head for a swappable drive such as the Qualstar 1052, would be needed.
That said — doesn't the Univac that is present in the museum itself have a working 7-track drive?
Last I heard it wasn't working well. Is my information out of date? Don't know if it was the drive or control.
People working with the Univac had also made modern interfaces to the Univac NTDS interfaces so might be able to write a "simple" program to dump tapes through that if drives are working.
There was some discussion on using head from IBM 3480/3490? to read 7 tracks. Couldn't find what I remembered online and not cheap to acquire. I did recently pick up a 7 track head but its in bad shape so not sure if it is usable.
Just had ATR overhaul a head for an Ampex ATR-101 recorder - might be an option for your 7 track head.
-- DuaneCraps sdɐɹɔ ǝuɐnp
There was some discussion on using head from IBM 3480/3490? to read 7 tracks. Couldn't find what I remembered online and not cheap to acquire. I did recently pick up a 7 track head but its in bad shape so not sure if it is usable.
Could you use single/2 track heads offset physically then shift the bits? - Ethan
On 1/27/23 12:59, Ethan O'Toole via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
There was some discussion on using head from IBM 3480/3490? to read 7 tracks. Couldn't find what I remembered online and not cheap to acquire. I did recently pick up a 7 track head but its in bad shape so not sure if it is usable.
Could you use single/2 track heads offset physically then shift the bits?
That would take some precision positioning, but it sounds doable. But then you'd have to worry about skew. Not sure how to handle that. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 1/27/23 12:42, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
There was some discussion on using head from IBM 3480/3490? to read 7 tracks. Couldn't find what I remembered online and not cheap to acquire.
If that goes anywhere, we have spare 3480 heads at LSSM, we can probably make one available.
I did recently pick up a 7 track head but its in bad shape so not sure if it is usable.
There's a company that specializes in re-lapping tape heads. I don't recall their name offhand, but they do exist. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
That is a welcome offer. Shooting from the hip, and risking not knowing what I'm talking about... I could see a later workshop focusing on using your unit to specifically do the UNIVAC tape archive and then if we are successful we'd look at outfitting VCF MidAtlantic with the capability. There are details on the UNIVAC, such as having to verify we can also write a tape, to check that we can reproduce a working tape from the archive, and surely other issues too, that we will broach as we approach doing the archive. On 1/27/2023 12:14 PM, David Ryskalczyk via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
The best option for some of those formats is Len Shustek's readtape — https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape
It does require a 16-channel Saleae Logic Pro (perhaps an 8-channel would be sufficient for 7-track tape). I have a 16-channel — got it at launch when these cost around $500. Nowadays it costs $1400 (perhaps with a discount available for institutional use, but even there it would likely be around $1000).
If someone is interested in working through the documentation to figure out how to do this with the Univac or other machines at the museum, and then utilizing my unit to attempt sometime later this year, please contact me off-list.
Thanks! David
On Jan 27, 2023, at 12:06 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Ok. That's a tough nut to crack.
-Dave
On 1/27/23 11:59, drummy wrote:
The Univac tapes are 7 track. Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Date: 1/27/23 11:41 AM (GMT-05:00) To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Cc: Dave McGuire <mcguire@neurotica.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Seeking Applesauce FDC testimonials - museum use On 1/27/23 11:40, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I welcome a bit of illumination to help me form a vision of the totality of the problems. On the tape subject, one practical need I'd like to crack this year is archiving the UNIVAC 1219 tapes. Lets start a new thread on tapes if anyone has more to offer at this time. We do a lot of tape archiving at LSSM, and can help with some of this. Are the Univac's tapes 7-track, or 9? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
participants (7)
-
Dave McGuire -
David Gesswein -
David Ryskalczyk -
Douglas Crawford -
Duane Craps -
Ethan O'Toole -
Martin Flynn