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From: Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org>
To: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ]
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:18:26 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1574705910.29838.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> (raw)

I had a hand-held degausser, but lent it to someone years ago
and never got it back.

It was actually Exabyte that made me buy it.  I bought a new
8505 through a reseller to supersede the 8200 I was using for
home backups.  It turned out the 8505's firmware refused to
overwrite a tape already written at any but the highest density,
so I couldn't reuse any of my existing backup tapes.  Exabyte
insisted it was a feature, not a bug.  So I gave up and bought
a degausser so I could turn a used tape into a blank tape so
the damn tape drive would write on it.

For further vintage-computing amusement: I decided to buy at
that time because the reseller had arranged a deal with Exabyte:
trade in any old tape drive, working or not, and get a couple of
hundred bucks off on a brand-new 8505.  So I gave the reseller
an old, broken TK05 I had lying around.  My sales contact for
the reseller was a former service tech at the same company, so
I figured (correctly) he'd get the joke.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

             reply	other threads:[~2019-11-25 18:18 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-11-25 18:18 Norman Wilson [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-11-24 22:39 [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte Richard Salz
2019-11-24 22:52 ` Larry McVoy
2019-11-25  1:41   ` Dave Horsfall
2019-11-25  1:42     ` George Michaelson
2019-11-25  3:29       ` Dave Horsfall
2019-11-25  3:34         ` [TUHS] Someone wants to use an exabyte [ really bulk erasing ] Jon Steinhart
2019-11-25  3:59           ` William Pechter
2019-11-25 15:25             ` Clem Cole
2019-11-25 17:13               ` Al Kossow
2019-11-25  4:53           ` Dave Horsfall

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