[Simh] VAX 8200

[Ethan Dicks]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 1:23 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> The tape drive was not TK50. It was standard reel to reel media, horizontal like an studio audio tape deck, with a cover that had to be lifted in order to use it. The disk drive was housed in the same cabinet in a drawer below the tape unit.

That gives me a better picture - I was thinking the O.P. said the tape
drive was in the same cabinet as the CPU.

Yeah... TU80, TU81, etc... Was not uncommon to have a full-sized disk
drive (RA81, RA82...) below one of those.

Would only be TU80 if the box had a DWBUA Unibus adapter.

> The tape drive was "finicky" and seemed to work only with tapes ordered through DEC.

I don't remember any media problems with any of the tape drives I
worked with, but I do know there were some tapes that were thinner to
get more feet on a reel.  I'm pretty sure we didn't use those.  We
bought our tapes by the pallet from a 3rd party, not DEC, largely
because we sent our stuff to customers out on 9-track.  They went in
and out the door very rapidly.

>  The top mounted horizontal one is the TU80 and friends.

Yep.

> There was also a drive that had the tape loaded from the front, horizontally (RK05 fashion), I forgot what that was called.  It wasn't all that reliable since it had to do autoload, no manual threading possible.

TS05/TSV05 (Unibus vs Qbus).  I also have a later drive of that style,
a TSZ05, with a SCSI interface.  I use it to read most of my old
tapes.  Cipher brand transport mechanism, typically.

-ethan