I think that putting together a one off machine with a phase locked loop would be pretty straight forward - but rather then even worry about that - I would just pull the data off and do a "virtual" tbc of it in software. IF there is some sort of control track pulse it would be very simple, correction of timing error in software would be pretty straight forward to interpolate. In the article (and others) there is this persistent discussion of them "fading away"... this it unlikely - IF they can find the tapes - it is likely that they were reasonably high coercivity so the RF carrier may be a bit weaker - but probably still more then good enough to read - particularly considering some of the head technology that exists these days. Probably not a small project - - but this is a very "do-able" one....... of course finding tapes is a pre-requisite. What surprises me - is the general surprise that they were "lost" in the first place. This is a recurring theme for decades now - and I fear it will be repeated for many more....
Jim Lindner
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On Jan 10, 2007, at 11:17 AM, Richard L. Hess wrote:
Wired Magazine has written about the lost Apollo 11 tapes -- again. Still not found.
This is a good summary, though the last several paragraphs repeat at the end.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/nasa.html
This would most likely be an Ampex instrumentation recorder.
It would take some work, and the timebase would be less stable, but these tapes could probably be played on a cobbled-together system using an audio recorder. The timebase stability of the Ampex instrumentation recorders was better since the heads were right at the capstan (which was grooved).
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/ contact.htm Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.