TU-78 tape drives and EOT

[mangler at cit-vax.UUCP]

In article <646 at cygnet.CYGNETSYSTEMS>, will at cygnet.CYGNETSYSTEMS (Will Nelson) writes:
> The Cypher on the remote machine is constantly "shoe-shining",
> ie, goes forward a bit, rewinds a bit less, back and forth at 6250,
> whereas the TU-78 never rewinds.

Cipher streamers are strict about adhering to the gap-length
standards, they always write exactly the minimum gap, unlike
other streamers which write gaps up to twice as large if they
need to in order to keep streaming.  This makes Cipher's very
hard to stream without a cache.  That's why cache is standard
on most Cipher models.

Some start/stop GCR drives write 0.6 inch gaps.  The TU-78
is similar to the TU-77, a drive that writes 0.6 inch gaps;
perhaps the TU-78 falls in this class?

Don Speck   speck at vlsi.caltech.edu  {seismo,rutgers,ames}!cit-vax!speck