[TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte

[Dave Horsfall]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote:

> It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I can't defend these 
> drives, I had the same experience.  When I look back on it, the only 
> tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel and 
> the QIC-150.  Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed like 
> crap.

I see you've never enjoyed the thrills of "print through" on the 9-tracks, 
nor the build-up of gunk (the then Australian Atomic Energy Commission had 
a "tape cleaner" whereby the tape was basically run over a sharp blade).

And as for the QIC-150 drive that would occasionally fall back to what I 
would call a QIC-75 when presented with media previously written at a 
lower density...  I recall that an EPROM upgrade fixed that.

-- Dave