Transcription of 9-track tapes to CD-ROM

Abstract

The WHO! Marine Seismic community had about two thousand 9-track magnetic tapes in storage. The data stored were from marine experiments dating from the 1970's to 1990 and from computer models. The experiments included observations made with seafloor instruments and sondes in boreholes. These tapes were created on Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) V AXNMS and other older computer operating systems. The tapes needed to be read and put into a format that contemporary UNIX operating systems could read. This report documents the logistics of transcribing this information onto CD-ROM. A search was made to find the best way to read and rewrite these 9-track tapes to new media that would have a longer shelflife and be readable on today's UNIX variants. As a result of this search, an outside company was hired to do these conversions. The tapes that were readable from this first group of 381 tapes selected for transcription are now on twenty-five CDROMs.