Old school tape drive

Univac 1540 tape drive

An old Univac 1540 tape drive aboard the USS Midway, San Diego.

These dual magnetic drives were typically used with the type 1218 Computers equipped with either 16k or 32k of memory.

The solid look and feel of this drive blows me away.

Comments

[Dave Barak]

Just a quick note. I'm an Exhibits Department volunteer, and one of the things we're doing is refurbishing the SINS (Ship's Inertial Navigation System) room on board the Midway. We hope to get the tape drives running, to simulate actual use. A lot of the equipment was "de-milled" (de-militarized), meaning wires were cut and circuit boards were smashed inside the equipment, so it's going to be a tricky job.