[rescue] How well-preserved are these software tapes?

[Rob Craig]

Are those type of tapes still able to be read without breaking? I was trying to read some QIC 2GB tapes for an AS/400 and they just break on read. The same for tapes for a HP 9000. 
Regards,
Rob

> On 16 Mar 2026, at 22:26, silcreval via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Andrew
> 
> Definitely worth preserving. The early 68020 / 68030 would be very welcome.
> 
> If there is no-one able to do it for you I can image them - but I imagine there will be people more local to you.
> 
> Ian
> 
>> On 16 Mar 2026, at 17:51, Andrew Ferguson via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Last week I rescued a bunch of computing equipment and old media from a store-room clearout at my university. I'm trying to find appropriate homes for all of the hardware (with one or two exceptions, I don't plan to keep any of it - no space!!).
>> 
>> Other than a Datacube Max-box (which I believe(?) may contain an early VMEbus-based Sun system) there's no Sun hardware, but there are quite a few Sun-branded QIC tapes that I'm pretty sure would have been used with the Datacube. I've attached a picture to this email of some of them (hoping the attachment will come through!)
>> 
>> What I want to figure out is - is the software on these tapes preserved or not? i.e. how concerned should I be about ensuring that they go to a place that will try to recover them? I've been speaking to a couple of places about transferring all the media and equipment, and if these tapes are "significant" in any way I can alert them of this.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> Andrew
>> 
>> <sun-tapes.jpg>
>> 
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> 
> 
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