HP and Overland 9-Track Tape Drives Demo

Three out of four of my vintage 9-track tape drives are working of tonight, including for the very first time my venerable HP 7970E. Time for a video! Each of them is special. The jewel of the collection is the HP 7970E, a tape drive introduced in 1970. I believe this E model is from 1974 or thereabouts. It is serious hardware, and weighs in at 140 lbs. I needed to resurrect it for my HP 21MX system of the same period. It talks only to HP equipment using HP-IB, so it is quite a challenge to bring online. The other tapes were acquired mostly to support this one.

The HP 88780B is its grandson, introduced in 1987, for the quaint sum of $22,400. The auto-loading mechanism is a gem. It will vacuum-thread the tape all by itself. This is the OEM version with the SCSI-1 interface, which makes it noticeably easier to work with on modern computers. Unlike the rarer start/stop HP7970 tape, which can work efficiently on individual records like a disk, the 88780 is a streamer tape. It is optimized for uninterrupted, continuous motion, fast backup writing.

We'll also spin an early 1990's vintage Overland Data OD3201. This is a reasonably sized, reasonably priced, much lower performance drive which was primarily meant for intermittent work with PCs, mainly to retrieve or exchange information from mainframes. This one is unique for its dual interface - a slow but convenient parallel port to hook it up to PCs, and a classic Pertec to hook it up to vintage mainframe equipment.

Both of my Qualstar 1260S SCSI tapes refused to cooperate tonight, so one of them just stands in as a decoration. But you can see it in this video when it is in a better mood, operating with a Mac SE/30:
[edit] I have now repaired both Qualstars, repair video here:

On a 2400 ft reel, the tapes hold about 40 MB of data at 1600 cpi density, and 140 MB at 6250 density.

"st" SCSI tape software utility by John Wilson available here:

"hpdir" HP-IB tape software by Angsar Kueckes available here:

[rot_studios]

That auto-loading was magical. Some people had fun designing that :D

[jamesm]

Lovely machines, built to last for many years, a joy to see.

[DustinRodriguez_]

When I was in college, I worked in a data center for a bank as a mainframe operator on the evening/night shift. They used an NCR mainframe with 9-track tape drives similar to the 'granddaddy' one you showed. Lest you think I am positively ancient, this was from 1997 to 2001. Like most banks, their approach to technology was simple: CAN it be done without buying anything new? Then you don't get anything new. Doesn't matter how old and busted it is. While I worked there, we got a call from a restaurant in another part of the country. Turns out, they were the ONLY other people in the entire nation still using the model of mainframe we were. And they were getting rid of it and replacing it with a PC. They gave it to us for free if we would haul the monstrous thing away.

The tape drives in particular were a nightmare. They had the vacuum-driven autoloading, which is totally awesome... when it works. Unfortunately, the primary tape drive we used had a broken seal so could not get a proper vacuum. And it squealed like mad. It was positively deafening in the mainframe room where I primarily worked. Most of the time, I had to thread the tape manually, but had to let it try to do it auto a few times before it gave up and let me do it by hand. The drive itself was much larger than the one you showed, about 5 feet tall (but the same width and the same vertical layout). Rather than a cabinet door on a hinge, it had a neat sliding clear plastic 'blast shield' type thing that would open/close as necessary. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they were still running that mainframe and those tape drives. Short of a catastrophic failure like the thing bursting into flames, the bank simply was not willing to upgrade. They got bought by another bank chain and everyone said they were going to close the separate data center and merge all the systems into the purchasers existing data center... but when I ran into an ex-coworker 5 or 6 years later, he said they gave up on migrating it because dealing with all the old software was just too much...

[LMacNeill]

Ok, that auto-load thing was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen on a tape drive! Ingenious!!

[AiOinc]

I think I like the big noisy auto loading drive. The relay ticking when it changes directions makes for a good ambience.

[modemfox]

I love this stuff. I wish more people made videos like this.

[HansOvervoorde]

The mechanics of the 8878OB (the first one, using vacuum to load the tape) run so smooth and seem built to last for eternity, very impressive, I'm loving it! I'm also thrilled that there are people out there, scattered over the world, who have a fundamental understanding on how data data reading and writing is controlled via the I/O on these machines on which they are able to write software to run those machines from a (much) later and very different platform and interface than initially thought to work with. I think that that ability is very unique and I'm happy that these people are in contact with another.

[robsciuk]

I had *BOTH* of these very devices, and used them regularly for backup, and to distribute commercial software back in the 1980's. What a time trip. Thanks.

[edgeeffect]

We had an autoload in our PDP-11/73 at college... but I never got to see inside when it was loading. So thanks for letting me have a peek inside after all these years.

[tsbrownie]

I knew some of the guys at HP who developed the HP 88780B. They called it "the pizza oven" drive. If I recall, it had a "thumper" to tap the tape before it started moving to prevent "sticktion" i.e. the tape sticking to the head before there was time to develop the air layer between tape and head.

[rty]

An ibm 2401 could rewind an entire tape in 64 seconds! It did this by pulling the tape out of the vaccuum columns and rewinding extremly fast, then sense the remaining tape by a photo sensor. When the tape got low, it would load back into vaccuum columms and move tape backwards to BOT sensor. If unload was requested it would pull tape up from columns and slowly roll backwards until the tape break sensor detected no more tape and glass door would come down.
The IBM 3420 had an autoloader sysyem which the tape had a special band around it. The drive would puff some air into the band and the tape would come out of a little window on the band and would be blown across the heads and then by vaccuum onto take up spool. Then the tape would enter the columns and would advance the tape to the BOT markern then the drive would be ready

[SteveHartmanVideos]

This was really fun to watch... These machines are before my time but it's really interesting to see how it used to be.

[wanjaschonecke]

this reminds me on my childhood... these machines are just sooo beautiful :)

[matthewghali]

I remember seeing a rack-mounted auto-loading tape drive for the first time when i was 9 or 10 years old.. ooh, its hard to match that level of cool, even today :)

[Galfonz]

I used to work at a place that had one of the 7000 series tape drives. We called it the little tape drive because it fit in the same 19 inch rack as the HP 3000 CPU. The other tape drives were vacuum column types which were much larger.

[johnvanwinkle]

Using vintage peripherals on modern computers is cool! Great job!

[eliotmansfield]

I remember being shown one of those autoloaders in 1986 a as 16 year old repair apprentice - very impressive.

[paulbowden]

I remember seeing the autoload on some DEC VAX/OpenVMS systems in late 80's. Very reliable. Takes me back.

[PlaywithJunk]

I repaired tape drives like that. Not HP but Cipher, DEC and Fujitsu. Super interesting technology, especially those with vacuum columns. I still have some air pumps and motors... 🙂

[ky]

That was just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.