Maynard Corp, based in Lake Mary, Florida is shipping its Archive Python digital audio tape drive for the DEC VAX: the tape drive uses helical scan technology and offers up to 2Gb of storage on a 4mm digital audio cassette tape; the new products have 512Kb random access memory and a transfer rate of 183Kb per second; the drives support SCSI I and SCSI II interfaces and are available either as stand-alone external or internal units in 5.25 or 3.5 half-high form factor; mechanical tape motion linkages have been eliminated, and the tape speed, motion and tension are electronically controlled by four direct drive motors; the drives also incorporate three microprocessors and four custom ASIC chips to provide on-board intelligence and the four-head design offers immediate read-after-write check as data is written; the format implements 10 distinct error handling techniques, including three levels of error correction code, which claims to reduce errors to less than 1 in 10 bits; an external drive costs $3,300 and the internal version is $2,800; a QBus controller is $3,450, and Unibus costs $4,400.
