stepleton
Veteran Member
A few weeks ago I took a chance on eBay for some IBM Problem Solver Library tapes for the IBM 5100. They've arrived, and after replacing the tension bands with the Mobilon bands that have been described elsewhere in this forum, it appears that they're in an unsurprising condition for 44-year-old magnetic media: hard to read, with some signs of oxide accumulating on the bands and on the read head. The tapes are dying, in other words, and there may not be more than one or two chances left to get data off of them. I assume that a complete recovery at this point may not be likely, but there is probably some data to be read here.
I was wondering what the best options might be to rescue data from these tapes. My equipment for now is very limited --- there's the 5100 itself with a tape mechanism in working order, and that's it. Within BASIC or APL, the user-accessible tape I/O facilities on the 5100 are content to thrash a tape it can't read very well back and forth like a dog with an old slipper, which doesn't seem very helpful here.
With some ingenuity I thought it might be possible to contrive a way to record flux transitions on the tape by wiretapping the tape mechanism itself as the tape is rewound past the tape head --- and later analysis on a modern computer could hopefully turn those recordings into real data. (A rewind is just the easiest way to get the 5100 to pass the entire tape over the heads without backtracking as it does when it tries to do reads --- a custom program typed into the DCP diagnostic monitor might be more useful for various reasions.) But there are probably more practical ways to do it than that, and maybe more effective ones too.
If there are any tape recovery hobbyists (or professionals) in or near the UK, it might be good to leave this case to their capable hands. I'm happy to take recommendations. Alternatively, if there's equipment and techniques that these people prefer to use, I'd be keen to hear about those, too. Thanks for any suggestions!
I was wondering what the best options might be to rescue data from these tapes. My equipment for now is very limited --- there's the 5100 itself with a tape mechanism in working order, and that's it. Within BASIC or APL, the user-accessible tape I/O facilities on the 5100 are content to thrash a tape it can't read very well back and forth like a dog with an old slipper, which doesn't seem very helpful here.
With some ingenuity I thought it might be possible to contrive a way to record flux transitions on the tape by wiretapping the tape mechanism itself as the tape is rewound past the tape head --- and later analysis on a modern computer could hopefully turn those recordings into real data. (A rewind is just the easiest way to get the 5100 to pass the entire tape over the heads without backtracking as it does when it tries to do reads --- a custom program typed into the DCP diagnostic monitor might be more useful for various reasions.) But there are probably more practical ways to do it than that, and maybe more effective ones too.
If there are any tape recovery hobbyists (or professionals) in or near the UK, it might be good to leave this case to their capable hands. I'm happy to take recommendations. Alternatively, if there's equipment and techniques that these people prefer to use, I'd be keen to hear about those, too. Thanks for any suggestions!