> > QIC does tend to have better movement support than 8mm...
> I think you have this backwards.  I have yet to encounter a QIC which
> will support BSR/BSF, while I have yet to encounter an 8mm which won't.

Archive VIPER QIC-150 does at least BSR and I think BSF.  The backspace
command is about 1% the speed of a forward read, however (it has to read
the block backwards, BIT REVERSE IT, then check to see if the checksum is
OK and what the current block number is -- bleah!).

I went to a great deal of effort in an old tape driver to figure out whether
a given seek was faster with backspace commands or rewind and forward space...
(Though I think the code was a little off, since the time to rewind is not
linearly proportional to block number.)  I know the QIC drives I used before
that didn't have backspace, though, and I haven't studied any QIC drives
since.