David Maxwell Cannon

Design and performance of a magnetic head for a high-density tape drive

The design of a magnetic head for use in the tape drive portion of the IBM 3480 Magnetic Tape Subsystem required that advances be made in track density and linear recording density while meeting requirements for signal quality, manufacturability, and reliability. The design that was developed to fulfill these needs combines ferrite pole-pieces, magnetoresistive read elements, and planar-deposited write turns. This paper describes the read and write elements of the head and the approach used in the selection of the design parameters.