8mm data cartridges

[Jules Richardson]

How common were drives which could read these? I suspect the answer is "not 
very"! If anyone has one, how reliable was/is the media?

I've got a couple of such Sony cartridges here dating from 1991; one does call 
itself a data cartridge (QG-112M) - the other one is a PAL/SECAM 90-minute 
Video8 tape (P5-90MP).

Going from the labels, both have backups from some UNIX system on them - but 
(helpfully!) no clue as to what that system was or what backup program wrote 
them. From the huge box of floppies that I found them in though, I suspect 
that they might be from an Olivetti 3B2 - in which case they're possibly just 
tar dumps.

I'm not sure what my chances are of finding a drive to read them are though 
(and worse still, such a drive might not be SCSI and so require a proprietary 
interface card and drivers). The packrat in me wants to try reading them 
rather than just tossing them out though :-)

cheers

Jules