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| 3M Magnetic Tape Viewer |
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| Berni:
--- Quote from: RoadRunner on March 02, 2020, 08:50:05 am ---I wonder why pattern appears to be a digital even though all tapes he tested are analog. Does it only shows peaks at certain level. --- End quote --- My guess is that the particles get pulled together where the strongest field it so most want to concentrate on the peak, but i would also assume there is some minimum field strength required for anything to show up. Quite a neat product, i could see this being very useful in the days of manually splicing together tapes. |
| helius:
This product is related to magnetic "developer", a bottle of fine iron filings used to see data on magnetic tape. If you had a reel of tape that was damaged somewhere in the middle, you could use the developer to see record boundaries and splice out the damaged record, which would enable most of the data on the tape to be saved. This was possible because reel tapes were longitudinally recorded in a single stream, with 9 tracks in parallel each representing a bit in a byte. There was a gap between each record where splices could be made without disrupting the data. When tape decks started to switch to helical and then serpentine recording (approx. mid-1980s), it stopped being possible to splice tapes while preserving the data. |
| bsudbrink:
I wonder if it can "see" tracks on floppy disks. 8 inch, 5.25 or 3.5. |
| ajb:
--- Quote from: bsudbrink on March 03, 2020, 04:28:20 pm ---I wonder if it can "see" tracks on floppy disks. 8 inch, 5.25 or 3.5. --- End quote --- That was addressed in the video description, and apparently the answer is no. The pattern on floppies is too dense and/or too subtle to be visible with this gizmo. |
| cvanc:
I vaguely remember these; didn't they have a membrane that had to be kept damp? |
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