downey (04/21/83)
We have several (12 now?) TS11's both at out downtown facility and on our mountain (6800 ft). The first ones arrived some years ago and they have been trickling in since, but none are newer than about six months. When we started getting them, they were universally horrible. They had problems such as pre- and postamble handling, tape stretching, incorrect read-after-write, capstan runaway, tension arm travel and would occasionally wrap a few hundred feet of tape around the capstan without saying a thing. DEC put in alot of time on them, including sending in some hot-dog from Maynard to get a good look at our worst ones. Finally, some months back (Nov?) DEC finally got it together and installed the big two FCO's mentioned recently on the net all machines. They take some three hours to do, and they even did the ones up on the mountain for free, even though they had long since gone out of warranty. Since these have been installed, all of the above have disappeared and they are no worse than our kennedys. In summary, they deserved the bad reputation they started with, but they have now settled down to be a reliable tape drive. That's not to say they are worth buying if you are in the market for more drives: they are expensive for only being single density (1600), 45ips drives, and you need one controller per drive. Again, the changes are referred to as EQ 01146 (FCO 7013573 M 0006) EQ 01106-00 (FCO 7420621 M 0002) EQ 01156-00 elwood downey, kitt peak national observatory, 950 n. cherry ave, tucson, az (602) 325-9221 {{{ucbvax|utah-cs|purdue|mcnc}!arizona}|unc|hao}!kpno!downey