Date: 26 Sep 2003 17:58:45 -0700 From: Frank Jahnke <jahnke@fmjassoc.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Follow-up: Tape conversion Message-ID: <1064624325.223.316.camel@zinfandel.fmjassoc.com>
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I'm following up with my request yesterday for recommendations for converting data from an old 9 track tape to a (more usable) CD. First, I'm grateful for all of the relies. Thank you! For the particulars, most have already been posted. I do not have a 9 track tape drive, nor do I wish to get one. I already have enough ancient computer stuff, and this tape (which has only about 5 MB or so of data) is the only one I have to convert. To Michael Squires: thanks for the tip on service bureaus in the Indianapolis area. If you can personally recommend one or two, I'd appreciate it. I'm in northern California, between Lake Tahoe and Sacramento, but I'd be happy to ship the tape to someone who can work with it (see also below). To Dan Nelson, who provided a list of potential vendors from a google search: if you can recommend one, I would be most interested in hearing about your experience, or that of one of your colleagues. Indeed, I came up with much the same list from my own google search. I did receive one personal reply from a gentleman who has collected almost a museum's of interesting computer hardware from an IBM 360 to a VAX with VMS and lots of other goodies, including of course a 9 track tape and a FreeBSD box. He kindly offered to do the conversion for me. So I have the tape boxed up, and I will send it to him on Monday. Still, my experience with tapes (admittedly more in the audio area than in computers) is that head alignment can be quite important, and old machines can sometimes be cranky. The quality of the tape is also unknown. So I'll see how this works out. I may yet need to go to a professional service, though I have every hope that this will succeed. Finally, I received a gentle admonishment to follow up to this list. My experience with mailing lists (mostly on Usenet over the last 15 years) has been that my public inquiries have given rise to a mixture of public and personal responses, as it was with this one. It has been my practise to collect the responses, and follow up publicly with those that also post to the list. Since I receive this list as a digest, that takes a bit of time. It seems that this list works a bit differently, and if it is expected that each reply be answered publicly to the list, I'd certainly be happy to do so in the future. Frank Jahnke
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