[Simh] VAX 8200

[Paul Koning]

> On Mar 17, 2017, at 12:18 PM, Gary Lee Phillips <tivo.overo at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> In any case, the issue I had was that the particular drive on the 8200 would not read back tapes written even by itself. We used it only for backups from the hard drive. DEC support was called in several times to adjust, calibrate, test, etc. It worked best only with DEC-branded media and if the heads were cleaned before every single use, and finally they just shrugged and said "Use only our media." Of course, theirs cost about twice what we paid for the large bulk quantities of 9 track tape used in the IBM center on the floor below. It wasn't my problem at that point, and my boss just ordered some tapes from DEC. 

Wow.  That's quite outrageous.  My boss would have said "replace the entire drive and controller if necessary"; the answer you got was entirely unacceptable and the people who said it had no business working for DEC.

	paul