> > I think somehow the earlier manual drives were better in this 
> > regard, though had other short-comings.  We had TU16's on a PDP-11
> > where I worked and the 'TU' part of the name became 'Totally Useless'.
> 
> The TU16 isn't *that* bad, try a TU45...

Is the TU16 different than a TE16?  I have a bunch of TE16 drives (with
TM03 Massbus formatters) that I haven't yet used.  Several people have
told me that they were pretty decent drives.

We had a TU45 on the 11/750 (later replaced by an 8650) at the university,
and I don't recall ever having trouble with it, but OTOH I wasn't the one
who had to maintain it.