Exabyte 8mm tape drives come of age

[David L. Markowitz]

ghg at en.ecn.purdue.edu (George Goble) wrote a great letter about "Exabyte
8mm tape drives come of age", but we still have concerns regarding shelf
life of stored tape.  Have any of you Exabyte users had any problems with
old, stored tape?  (I know there isn't much "old" tape out there.)  What
are the recommended environmental parameters for storage?  (min and max
temperature, humidity, etc.?)

On a related subject, how many hours of use have individual drives been
subjected to without failure (just post-June 1988 drives)?  Comments like
"we used our 14 drives for 1000 hours, with each one being upgraded
halfway through" don't reflect the expected lifetime of the Sony tape
transport.

	David L. Markowitz		Rockwell International
	...!sun!sunkist!arcturus!dav	dav at arcturus.UUCP
	The above opinions are merely that, and only mine.