HP 9877 Tape Memory /Duplicator was Re: 09877-10002

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Sat Aug 2 07:50:15 2003

At 01:25 AM 8/2/03 -0400, you wrote:
>In cctalk-703, Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com> wrote:
>> The drive systems are widely available in the surplus market and are
>> cheap. In fact, since you're a government agency you could get them for
>> nothing from other government agencies that are surplussing them. I
>> would recommend the HP 9121 S or D disk drives. They're small,
>> reliable and use standard 720k 3.5" floppy disks. The S drive is a
>> single drive and the D drives have two drives in them. I thnk you'll
>> need one of the option ROMs in order to use the floppy dirves but those
>> are also available surplus and again you could probably get all you
>> need from other agencies for free. There are a LOT of 9825s out there.
>
>I have talked with these guys as well and their problem is getting the
>files off their last working tape.

    They shouldn't need the 9877 for that. If they do then they need to see
about getting their 9877 tape repaired but they don't seem to be interested
in doing that. I've offered to put them in contact with someone who can fix
it TWICE and they've shown no interest.


>
>james.clements_at_robins.af.mil wrote:
>> Apparently there are some files that are protected some way. It will
>> not allow us to copy all the files. Some copy fine others do not.
>
>I didn't know you could have protected files in the 9825, but if they
>have tried and failed, then we need to explore other ways of getting
>these files off the tape.
>
>So I was thinking, can another machine (e.g. HP 85) read 9825 tapes?

   I don't think so. The 9835 and 9845 are both bigger machines but there's
nothing in their manuals to indicate that they can read 9825 tapes. Also
the 9825 runs HPL and the others are BASIC so there's no way that they
could read program files. (Program files are stored in a compressed binary
format and only de-compressed when they are edited or listed.) The
designated replacement for the 9825 was the 9826 (68000 CPU based machine)
with HPL ROM card or disk based HPL. But there's no tape drive for the 9826.

    Joe


>I think the tape mechanism is the same, but I am not sure about the
>way data is organized on the tape.
>
>Thanks
>
>**vp
Received on Sat Aug 02 2003 - 07:50:15 BST