[TUHS] Choice of Tape Format for BTL UNIX Distro

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) via TUHS]

Arnold Robbins via TUHS writes:

> I think at some point 9 track tape drives hit something like 6400 BPI,
> but I may be hallucinating the memory.

By at least the mid-1980s, 6250 BPI drives were available.  But
they were expensive, so software for geneneral distribution was
usually shipped on 1600 BPI tapes to be comatible with the majority
of tape drives.

6250 drives could read/write 1600 tapes, and many could handle 800
BPI as well.

--lyndon