IBM-34380 Tape Units
|
The IBM 3480 tape unit uses a small reel of half-inch chromium dioxide tapes that is enclosed in a compact cartridge for greater tape protection and automatic tape threading. It records 18 tracks of data in one direction at an approximate density of 38,000 bits per inch and a nominal (uncompressed) data capacity of 200 megabytes. |
3480-A22 Control unit
|
It supports four parallel (bus and tag) channels and data transfer rates up to 4.5 megabytes/second and a 2-megabyte internal buffer. Our control units also support the Improved Data Recording Capability. IDRC provides hardware data compression and decompression within the control unit to permit increased data capacity on a tape cartridge without the penalty of CPU processing to do the compression and decompression. The 3480-A22 is pictured at the left in the top photo. There are two 3480-A22 units in the machine room (only one is pictured), to which are attached four drive units each, or eight total drives for each string. The control units are channel-attached to both of the mainframes. |
 |
3480-B22 Tape Unit
|
Each tape unit contains two drives. There are four 3480-B22 units shown in the picture above with a total of eight drives. The four drives nearest the camera are equipped with the Automatic Cartridge Loader feature. A close-up of two ACL-equipped drives is shown in the middle photo. The ACL holds up to six tape cartridges and will automatically feed cartridges into the drive when called for by the computer. Drives not equipped with ACLs require that the operator manually insert and remove tapes in the drive. Located at the top of the tape unit units are LED message displays for each tape drive on which the host operating system can display status messages (such as the volume serial of the tape to be mounted on the drive). The operator to provide optimum viewing can rotate these displays. |
 |
|
Tech Info
