Let me repost what Jean Dion posted today on comp.arch.storage in the thread
"Are DLT drives as good as Quantum says?". He may be known on this list as
an author of a label printing program.

------ 8< ---- 8< ----
>
> AFAIK no. 3480 is uni-directional with an 18 track head.
> 3490 is bi-directional which eliminates a rewind operation if the
> entire tape is used. 3480 capacity w/o compression is about 400MB,
> IIRC. It was a _big_ improvement in the mainframe world over reel
> tapes, BTW.
>
> Jerry
>

Strangely enough it didn't require any consortium (LTO like) to get drives
capable to read/write 3480/3490 tapes.  Reverse engineering was very strong
at the time.  This is how HDS, Fujitsu, STK (and others) were capable to
compete against IBM.  STK was very successful by been the first and biggest
tape automation back then (1988) and still gets that market (over 60%).  IBM
is down 30% on tape this year compare to last year when STK is up 5%.

As for DLT I think they got very good drive and the market share is there to
prove it.  It as very big challenge by LTO who's eating there lunch every
day.  This is understandable because HP and IBM will put LTO drives into any
servers offering.  The biggest lost for Quantum is Compaq been HP today.
Compaq was the biggest DLT supporter.  LTO outsold SDLT in number of drive
shipment this year.  Is this good...well maybe not.  Overall my perception
with SDLT is better than LTO who still suffer stability with some vendors.

Some report that most of library market is going IBM LTO Fibre Channel.
SCSI is fading rapidly.  This is why Seagate will announce LTO 2 Gbit FC
soon.  HP will follow late this year or early next with LTO Gen2.

Beware that LTO Gen2 specs will be way different by among vendors. This is
the case today in Gen1 but even more with Gen2.

But market dictate where you should go NOT technology or media quality.
Sony Betacam remember that.

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