Qualstar Model 1052 magnetic tape drive

UvA Computer Museum catalogue nr 01.28

qualstar tapedrive
This tapedrive (1989) is a relatively small and lightweight unit, designed for reading and writing 0.5 inch industry standard magnetic tapes in a microcomputer environment. As the manufacturer puts it (anno 1989): 'it is bridging the communications gap between PC's and mainframes'.

At 1600 BPI (bytes, or rather 9-bit frames per inch) its speed is 50 inch/sec, which is slow as compared to 125 inch/sec of (for example) our Kennedy 9400 tapedrive. However for occasional tape reading jobs the drive comes very handy, and it generally has less difficulty in reading old tapes than faster drives. It has a standard Pertec/Cipher interface. In our museum workshop, we use it connected to an IBM PC/AT by means of an AT-bus controller. This Overland Data card comes with useful software for analyzing, reading and writing tapes.
This tapedrive and the accompanying controller card were donated by Mr. Adri Koopman of Markgraaf, Amsterdam.
In the foreground a scale model of an IBM 2401 tapedrive (1965) is shown; in reality its height is about 170 cm (the real machine is not in our collection).

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