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A project log for THE PERTEC WHISPERER-MAINFRAME TAPE DRIVE EMULATOR

A.K.A. THE 9 TRACK TAPE DRIVE COMMUNICATOR Talking to Mainframes Era Reel to Reel 9 track tape drives

skaarj[skaarj] 04/15/2018 at 11:480 Comments

This is the classic Arduino.  8 bits architecture is required to keep things as simple as possible - just because the PERTEC communication protocol is a real pain. It is documented on bitsavers on all those PDFs gathered by the willpower of our digital forefathers. Documenting this is still work in progress, as I have to read everything from beginning to end. Some PDFs have hidden surprises which the rest do not tell. These secrets are well kept.

Added 512kB RAM for buffering the transfer.

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