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From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject: Re: 9-Track Recovery
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 03:22:50 -0700
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On 9/12/2013 9:00 AM, Dan wrote:
> On 9/12/2013 10:29 AM, ...
>> On 2013-09-12, Dan <degspam@comcast.net> wrote:
>>> Don't know where I should ask this but you guys know everything.
>>>
>>> I have a 30 yo ANSI 9-track mag tape I'd like to dump.
>>> It has some original SW technology that I'd like to get credit for.
>> [...]
>>>
>>> This technology is currently and literally used by everyone who
>>> uses any sort of text processing SW.
>>>
>>> I'm in MA. Is there anyone that can safely dump it?
>>>
>>> /dan
>
> I'm not interested in the money. I was working for DEC at the time so HP
> would now own any patents.
> 
> At 70 I would just like my 15 min.

Hmmm, a 9-track tape presumably written on a DEC machine.

PDP-10?  DECsystem-20?  VMS?    All have different tape formats.

One very remote possibility of someone with a tape drive that might
be able to read the tape is Joe Smith here:

    http://www.inwap.com/main.shtml

And another is Mark Crispin who used to have two DEC-2020 with
tape drives in his home when he was here in Silicon Valley but
he's since moved.  Some info here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Crispin

Arrgh, the Wikipedia article states he died on December 28, 2012.  :-(

He will be missed.  I first met him at Stanford.  Besides IMAP
he was the author of a lot of software including TOPS-20 MM which
is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about him as it is in
this article:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_MM

where it states he also authored the TOPS-20 MM program which was
an extremely featureful mail program and he implemented many of
those features in the Pine mail program.

More info about Mark:

    http://www.linkedin.com/in/markcrispin

Thad