Hitachi, Ltd.

Kozo Fujita

Masatoshi Ishikawa

Shigeyuki Kobata

A magazine in which a plurality of cartridges are contained as vertically moved stepwise by a distance separating two successive ones of the cartridges. The lift has a plurality of lift steps alternately engaged by a latching member. A rotary disk having two pins on its face is arranged adjacent the latching member. During rotation of the disk, one of the pins pivots the latching member out of engagement with a lift steps while the other of the pins supports the disengaged lift step to raise or lower the lift, depending upon the rotational direction of the disk. Further rotation of the disk permits the spring biased latching member to pivot back into a path where it engages the next lift step, thereby accomplishing one step of movement of the lift. Each time the lift is moved by one step, a pinch roller arrangement detects whether a cartridge is in the magazine corresponding to the position currently aligned with the inlet/outlet of the tape changer. If a cartridge is present, then the pinch rollers move the cartridge to load it into a magnetic tape unit, otherwise the lift is moved by another step, and the presence of a cartridge at the new position is detected. In this way, all of the cartridges present in magazine are sequentially loaded into the magnetic tape unit and after being ejected from the magnetic tape unit are loaded back into the magazine.

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Gotenba, Japan

Kozo Fujita