MightyFrame on eBay in Austria

Archived eBay Auction

QIC-24 Tape Data Block Format Decoding & Analysis

Please also visit QICreader.com

So far, it seems that the comprehensive details of how the magnetic flux transitions are arranged on QIC tape using the QIC-24 standard, have been lost in the halls of time, and never made it to the internet, at least not in a complete way.

In my opinion, QIC.org should be the most likely to have this information, but they seem lacking in the QIC-24 (and QIC-11) department.

Well, I am hoping that this page will fill in a lot of the missing information about QIC-24 tape format.

Before diving in, I wanted to clarify some of the "standard" terminology that surrounds this very mid-1980s QIC tape technology.  I've tried to simplify the definitions, and I put them in my own words.

QIC-24 is a tape data read/write format, defined best by 

Computer Peripherals, Chapter 11: Magnetic Tape Drives, page 7

MightyFrame Games Download

I discovered last night, immediately after setting up my vintage UNIX/CTIX display in the Whiskey Pirate Crew room at DEFCON 23 (2015), the crowd has spoken!  What do all of you hackers want to see?  Vintage MightyFrame games!

So, as a tribute to Whiskey Pirate Crew's hospitality and welcome of my vintage UNIX display at Defcon 2015, here they are:

Download the .zip of all default games 

found in the CTIX 5.25.1 factory-fresh install.

On the MightyFrame, these games reside at /usr/games

MightyFrame Peripheral Mounting Brackets

If you ever come across a full-height MFM hard drive or QIC tape drive with this style of mounting bracket, chances are that it came from a Convergent Technologies machine, most likely a MightyFrame.  Please drop us a note if you ever come across any of these:

MightyFrame S/320 Tape Drive mounting bracket

(The hard drive mounting bracket for this machine was misplaced when it was first removed)