6250 bpi magnetic tape data recovery

[android]

I know this is a long shot, but is there anyone on the forum (preferably in Sydney, Australia) that has any ability to recover data from some old 6250bpi half inch round mag tapes that I have? ...from the late 1980's...sentimental value only.

[Halcyon]

Out of curiousity, what kind of tape is it? Pics?

[woodchips]

Have you tried the HP museum which is in Australia? They have a wide range of old computer kit.

[@rt]

For anyone else like me who was wondering: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/media/media3.jpg

[android]

Have you tried the HP museum which is in Australia? They have a wide range of old computer kit.

Thanks for that, I'll make some enquiries.

I did get a kind offer to do the job for free from a guy in the USA but I was put off by the shipping costs. Since then I've been daydreaming (emphasis on fantasy) about the possibility of making my own reader that reads the magnetic encoding but at very low speed (maybe weeks for one tape) and piece it all back together later using software.

FWIW, I've attached pics of my stash

[amyk]

I was reminded of card skimmers using heads from audio tape players, but then I looked it up and magstripe cards are only 210bpi. Floppy drive heads might be able to handle the density.

[albert22]

It has been decades since I worked with those tapes.
You will need a 9 track head to read the tape. Or perhaps a combination of single track heads and a method of deskewing the tracks. Although it seems very difficult at 6250bpi,  IRCC you can take advantage of horizontal and vertical parity to valid the data you get.