are the tapes becoming unreadable or is the drive filling with crud? 
as time goes on, i suspect that the tapes leave more of their surface
behind as they pass through the transport.. the last time i dealt with
tk50s in any reasonably numbers was almost 2 years ago, but i found i had
to clean the drive after every tape if i wanted reliable performance. 
Isildur

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 Robertdkeys@aol.com wrote:

> It seems that the last of my tk50 tapes are going belly up,
> and becoming unreadable.  I would like to find some way
> to hook up Cipher 9 track scsi tape decks to my MVIII.
> They are infinitely more reliable that the tk50 drives.
> I am using a couple of scsi mscp HD controllers, so the
> thoughty occurred to me to try to find a way to bring up
> the Cipher decks on the ol' qbus critter, if that is doable.
> Yeah, I know, that is overkill, but, I have the decks and
> the tapes, but I need to find a proper qbus controller for
> them.  What qbus controller do I need, and where might
> I find one that won't break the piggy bank, too much?
> I want to find one that is known to work well with NetBSD
> and maybe also Ultrix.
> 
> Any pointers thereto are greatly appreciated.
> 
> Also, are there any new manufacture TK50 tapes
> available.  I am beginning not to want to trust old
> ones that have been sitting on the shelf for years
> and years.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> R.D. Keys
> 
>