16 Oct
2015
16 Oct
'15
10:03 a.m.
A nine track drive would certainly not work with an ACARD adapter- they are
"intelligent" designed for mass storage. And on top of that the only adapters I
know of go the wrong way (IDE devices on a SCSI bus), though I haven't researched the
reverse.
I gave Josh Dersch a Xircom USB to SCSI not so long ago and we had no issue getting it to
talk to an HP SCSI 9-track tape drive and even streaming music off of it.
Linux handles both devices fine- plug and play.
I have a Microtech USB to SCSI and it worked similarly although my 9-track streamer is
sort of screwed.
There's not even a project here. Connect the cables and try it, or forever hold your
postulation... ;)
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 16, 2015, at 08:05, ethan at 757.org wrote:
Horrific
hijacking topic-drift but I remember your name from a recent
google... ages ago you were trying to get an IBM 9348 9-track working
with a USB to SCSI converter... did you succeed? What did you use? I'm
in exactly the same position!
Thanks
Mike
*AWESOME* You just reminded me of a project I need to get back to. Yea I was planning to
use it as media storage for car audio (storing music on 9 track tape.)
I have the drive still. I managed to get a SE to DIFF converter board and boxes. IIRC I
bought one, then ended up with more from a SGI computer haul. The tape drive has a board
internally that comes in both a SE and DIFF version, but the SE board was way more than
the cost of a converter which should just be some simple logic chips or op amps or
whatever.
I bought some tapes from eBay for the project, have those nearby.
The USB to SCSI adapter I had -- I think the trick to it is it could only handle 1
device, and the SCSI ID had to be 0 or 1. I still haven't but haven't used it.
These days, if I revist the project, I'd probably go with an ACARD or modern similar
device that does IDE To SCSI bridging.
I have no idea how tape drives work, and how those little bridge gadgets handle
forwarding SCSI CDB and other data. Are they only meant for hard drives? Could NetBSD unix
tape commands work with the drive? Not really sure.
The drive is in Norfolk in storage.
So I got all the parts, then never got around to making it go. One thing was all the
cables needed since it was like 68 to 68 then 68 to 50 then 50 to 25 to use the USB thing.
I never settled on the playback board, now there are way more options!
At one point I even had permission from the 80s band Information Society to use there
song "Where would we be without IBM" in a video of the whole thing. Hmp.
--
Ethan O'Toole