As with disks, Ersatz-11 uses a flexible device-independent interface to allow any supported physical tape device type to emulate any supported PDP-11 tape device type. E11's BOOT command includes support for tape drives, and using a compatible SCSI drive, the emulated PDP-11 can even be booted directly from original DEC operating system distribution tapes. The paper tape bootstrap emulates the absolute loader and can boot from ".LDA" files.

Physical PC sequential devices:

• Tape images in container files under the host operating system.
• Raw SCSI tape drives, including DEC TZ30 and TK50Z-GA, as well as 9-track drives and DAT, DLT, etc.
• RAM tapes in host memory.

Emulated PDP-11 sequential devices:

dev name	controller types	drive types
CT:	TA11	TU60 DECassette dual cassette tape
DD:	DL11	TU58 DECtape II, see block devices
DT:	TC11	TU55/TU56 DECtape, see block devices
MM:	RH11/RH70 + TM03	TE16, TU45, TU77 Massbus magtape drives
MS:	TS11, TSU05/TSV05, M7454, TQK25	TS04, TS05, TU80, TK25 magtape drives
MT:	TM11	TS03, TU10 magtape drives
MU:	KLESI, TQK50, TQK70	TU81, TK50, TK70 TMSCP tapes
PR:/PP:	PC11	PC04 high speed paper tape reader/punch