Denys writes:
> The DDS-4 technology[snip]

> It will only be able to read, not write on DDS-1 90 meter tapes.
> DDS 60 meter tapes cannot be read from or written to by a DDS-4 drive.

Hence, you don't want to have a machine that *only* contains a DDS-4, since
that will lead to issues with receiving software updates and patches from HP
and other software vendors, since many people (including HP to judge from a
sample of recent tapes laying around) still ship everything on 60m tapes.

The other side of this problem is that if you have a system with only an
original DDS-1 drive, you need to think about upgrading because the world is
now moving towards devices which cannot produce tapes readable by those
drives.

G.