🚀 go-pugleaf

I just get the feeling that some basic points are being lost when the
8mm vs. 4mm issue comes up.  Here my 2 cents, all 1 cent worth of it.
 

Sometime, take a good look at the tape path taken in an 8mm drive.
270 degrees of wrap around the head, and you can see where the tape
buckles and contorts to fit around.  The mechanism stresses the tape.  

The head and the basic electronics were all designed with video in
mind, where track-to-track isolation is of little concern.  Exabyte
did some good work in getting this to run for Data, but its still a
video deck.  They did not change the basic mechanicals.

The 4mm drives started from the ground up with digital data in mind.
Although they are lower capacity now, they have room for expansion as
the technology improves.  The tape path is short.  The tape does not
get flexed  and bent and stretched.  You get the feeling from looking
at the insides like maybe this thing can run a tape 3 or 4 hundred
times without breaking it.
-- 
Terence Kelleher
Encore Computer Corporation
terryk@encore.com