Get yourself a TEAC/Tascam 8 track reel-to-reel and digitize the tracks, then take it from there on a DAW.
Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a couple of 4U 9 track tape drives with centronics SCSI interfaces. Pulled from 90s Sun gear from ex Federal deployment. Government stuck with tape for a long time. One of them ran in 1999, at least, but they've been in the barn since. rebuilding that to functional might be harder than making some hacked up sensor to run tape through.
Maybe there'd at least be a way to salvage the basic mechanical structure, replace worn out mechanical parts with 3D printed or CNC'd equivalents and replace the sensor head with some kind of modern magnetometer.
I'd bet they'd operate with a cleaning. maybe some caps replaced. Any rubber belts are gone but i think these are direct drive.
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#23IBM’s dusty tape lab used to be in Tucson. Recovered the space shuttle tapes iirc.
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#24Get yourself a TEAC/Tascam 8 track reel-to-reel and digitize the tracks, then take it from there on a DAW.
Sadly ibm used 7-9 track tapes, so there's only a 33% chance that'd work, assuming all sold the same
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#25Get yourself a TEAC/Tascam 8 track reel-to-reel and digitize the tracks, then take it from there on a DAW.
Sadly ibm used 7-9 track tapes, so there's only a 33% chance that'd work, assuming all sold the same
You can offset the tracks and run it again until you have a good image. It should be fairly trivial to sync up repeat takes. But better of course if you can gain access to the original gear in running condition.
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#26Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#27Email George Blood LP ( https://www.georgeblood.com/ ), they have support to read like 100+ old magnetic formats and are wonderful pros.
Another thank you! I have choices
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is very helpful. I’m guessing you have a copy of the Brown/Blue => Blue/Brown book.
I'm not familiar with that description. I worked as a 370 series (370/3033/308x/309x) OS/MVS computer operator in the 80s, before programming.
Gary deWard Brown is the author and hence the name. If I recall, he also describes utilities like IEBGENER, IEBCOPY and so on.
One copy of the book on Amazon was over $100.
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#29The geophysical industry used 9-tracks for a long time and there are still services that will recover your legacy tapes and reformat to any modern output.
I have never used these guys, OnTrack(0), but they claim to do 9-track recovery.
Everything we did in the industry for decades lived on 9-track tapes. EBCDIC headers are a standard feature of SEG-Y output datasets.
Here is one who deals with geophysical data, Data Strategies Interchange(1).
[0] (https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/tape-services)
[1] (https://go-dsi.com/seismic-data-transcription/)
Good luck. Sounds like a fun project. I wrote a SEGD/SEGY reader for geophysical data a long time ago using tcl/tk. It was surprisingly easy. It used data from disk files though. I got rid of my SCSI 8mm and DLT drives a long time ago and went to pure disk IO. No more issues spinning tapes after that. In the industry though we did have some really good tape reading/writing/checking routines. Haven't done that since the mid-90's myself.
Re: Ask HN: Forensic analysis for 50 year-old tape?
#30I'm guessing that would be one of the old reel to reel tapes. I think the hardest part (assuming the tape is intact) would be finding a working tape reader. From pictures I've seen I think those were real beasts, in cabinets as large as the mainframe itself. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA is one of the few places that might have one. Otherwise you might be able to build your own tape reader. You coul…
I have a couple of 4U 9 track tape drives with centronics SCSI interfaces. Pulled from 90s Sun gear from ex Federal deployment. Government stuck with tape for a long time. One of them ran in 1999, at least, but they've been in the barn since. rebuilding that to functional might be harder than making some hacked up sensor to run tape through.
Now that would be a fun hack, no? I bet with the collective knowledge from this thread I might be able to pull it off.
I’m still working for the man, though.
I recall a time that I wrote a program that called for a tape mount and a file to be read where this file spanned 2 volumes. There was a 3270 terminal next to the tape reader. After the job is submitted, I was amazed at the velocity of the read.
The all time favorite raised floor data center story: I worked for a commercial software vendor back in the day where sufficient physical security for the data center was a lock on the building door, but no locks to the raised tile floor area.
One day I walked through the doors of the data center and everything was covered in a fine ash-like powder. Another employee brought their young child with him to the data center. This child pressed the red button labeled “Haylon Dump”.
I was told by the operators on watch that everyone was lucky to find their way out safely.
New locks were installed the next and badge swipes were required for entry.
Amazingly, all the hardware mostly survived.