This idea sounds similar to "software defined radio"... but for tape reading. Interesting.
This system is similar for old analog audio recordings:
https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2012/03/unlocking-sounds-of-the-pa...
I remember one of the curators mentioning that they had a ton of WWII records for things like daily newscasts which due to wartime supply issues were made from less durable materials, and since they weren’t commercially valuable the owners hadn’t spent time transferring many of them to newer media.
> My thought is that, if you could develop a sensor capable of sampling magnetic alignment at sub-micrometer resolution it would also generate unbelievable amounts of data that would first need compressing or decoding into AV signals.
Hard disk drive read head sweeping across the tape? Hard disk track widths are well below 1 micron so presumably the potential for high resolution is there?
Re:
by nonrandomstring on Thursday February 02, 2023 @05:53PM
(#34634440)
Nice idea. I think you'd have a problem with shedding. A HD head is
designed to fly/float above a clean platter. Old tape is icky, flaky
mess of brown dust and wobbly plastic that would foul up the head PDQ.
But rather than scanning maybe you could encapsulate a bunch of old HD
densely together in some kind of epoxy/glass to make a high-res tape
head?
My thought is that, if you could develop a sensor capable of sampling magnetic alignment at sub-micrometer resolution it would also generate unbelievable amounts of data that would first need compressing or decoding into AV signals.