exabyte tape unit

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Sun May 21 18:25:16 2000

> I have a quick question: I just procured an exabyte EXB8505ST and was
> wondering if any of you knew what tape it uses and what the capacity is in
> MB. Got this at a swap meet for the case, but if the drive is useable, I'll
> keep it together.

Native 5G (on 120 meter tapes?). More with compression. Uses 8mm data
tapes. Some 8mm video tapes (typically 112 meter?) have been known to
work, but if you go that route, don't use cheap ones. It's rumored that
Sony changed their 8mm tape formulation at some point to prevent their
video tapes from working in Exabyte drives, since they wanted to sell
higher-priced data-grade tapes.

Personally, I use data grade tapes anyhow.

In the "4mm" world (DAT & DDS), it astonishes me that most audiophiles will
only use DDS (data-grade) tape for recoding audio, because they don't want
any dropouts, but many computer users try to use cheap audio-grade DAT
tape for their data. I guess that shows who values their recordings more.

And yes, I've personally verified that the error rates on DDS tapes from
the major manufacturers are in fact lower than the error rates on the same
manufacturer's audio DAT tapes. Whether that's true of 8mm tapes as well,
I don't know, as I haven't done any comparisons.

> Respond off-list to keep the clutter down.

Nope.
Received on Sun May 21 2000 - 18:25:16 BST