
The IBM 7330 Magnetic Tape Unit was IBM's low-cost
tape mass storage system through the 1960s. Part of the
IBM 7 track family of tape units, it was used mostly on
1400 series computers and the
IBM 7040/7044. The 7330 used
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...
up to long wound on reels up to diameter.
Data format
The tape had
seven parallel tracks, six for data and one for
parity. Tapes with character data (BCD) were recorded in even parity. Binary tapes used odd parity. (709 manual p. 20) Aluminum strips were glued several feet from the ends of the tape to serve as beginning and end of tape markers.
Write protection was provided by a removable plastic ring in the back of the tape reel. A ¾ inch gap between records allowed the mechanism time to stop the tape. At 200 characters per inch, a single 2,400-foot tape could store the equivalent of some 50,000
punched card
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...
s (about 4,000,000 six-bit bytes).
Low speed (36 in/s) dual density (200, 556).
External links
IBM Magnetic Tape Equipment manuals (in PDF format)on bitsavers.org
7330
7330
Tape 7330
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