[Milsurplus] RE: Tape Decks (was Transcription Disks

[Robert W. Downs]

Mike,

Brings back old memories.  I had two FR-3030's and nine PR-2230's, or my
company did, but I bought them.  However, all of ours were for 1" 33 trac=
k
tape.  Used Honeywell 1858 CRT type light beam recorders for hard copy
output.  The Ampexes handled 4600 feet of one mil tape, give or take a fe=
w
hundred feet.  But the Honeywells only handled 200 feet of paper, so many=

rolls of paper to one reel of tape.  The Honeywells would also do up to 1=
20
ips.  At that speed, they could throw paper across a good sized room.  An=
d
at that speed, the intelligent operator programmed the autostop before
pressing the START button.  The unintelligent operators cost us a lot of
expensive Kodak paper.

>Three, yes -- or more, or fewer. =


One Ampex instrumentation tape drive I used to maintain and use
had speeds from 15/16 ips through 120 ips. Of course, it also
filled an 84" high rack, weighed 450 pounds, and used 9200-foot
reels of 2" tape, and had a top end of about 1.5 MHz at 120 ips.
The tape path used air bearings throughout, and it was made like
a (rather large, heavy, but beautifully precise) Swiss watch.

And it was reel to reel. ;=3D)
<

73
Robert Downs
<RWDowns_WA5CAB@compuserve.com>
Houston