[comp.sys.dec] Any one seen DEC's 4mm tape drive yet?

lgl@cac.washington.edu (Laurence Lundblade) (08/07/90)

There's a rumor, according to Digital Review, that DEC 4mm tape
drives don't work very well, if at all, and that DEC is giving VAX
4000 customers 8mm drives instead of 4mm drives. We've had one on order 
from DEC for a while now and are wondering when and what we might get.
Thanks for your comments.


Laurence Lundblade                       206-543-5617
  lgl@cac.washington.edu
     Networks and Distributed Computing, U of Washington, Seattle



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Laurence Lundblade                       206-543-5617
  lgl@cac.washington.edu
     Networks and Distributed Computing, U of Washington, Seattle

paulmc@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Paul McClelland) (09/14/90)

In article <lgl.649968642@bart> lgl@cac.washington.edu (Laurence Lundblade) writes:
>There's a rumor, according to Digital Review, that DEC 4mm tape
>drives don't work very well, if at all, and that DEC is giving VAX
>4000 customers 8mm drives instead of 4mm drives. We've had one on order 
>from DEC for a while now and are wondering when and what we might get.
>Thanks for your comments.
>
You may have a long wait, it seems that DEC is buying their 4mm tape drives
from (of all people) HP. HP is having serious problems with the read/write
heads that they get from Japan (I don't know which vendor), and are locked
into a single vendor (not all helicial scan heads are built alike). Seems
as though some of the DAT tape vedors are having quality problems, heads
mainly and adapting the audio DAT chip sets.        
Although I could say much more about the subject... well lets just say that
I know more than I can tell since the company I work for is developing a
3 1/2 form factor DAT tape drive, and will be announcing it in the second
quarter of next year.

paulmc 
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