8 May
2007
8 May
'07
3:56 a.m.
--- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
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).
Actually, they're pretty common from what I have seen,
but then again, I work with lots of systems that use
them. Those are Exabyte cartridges - you need to find
an Exabyte drive. Pretty common on eBay, expect to pay
around $15. The Exabyte drives are SCSI, and are
pretty reliable. There are several models, but since
we're talking about the older tapes, and since one of
them is a re-used video tape, you're looking for an
Exabyte 8200 or 8500, I'd say. Those drives are 5 1/4"
FH form factor SCSI drives.
Both tapes and drives seem pretty reliable, and using
video tape for data DOES work, although it's not
technically reccomended. Be patient with those old
Exabyte drives though, they take a long time to do
anything (like open the door, rewind...) and need to
be properly connected and terminated to be able to
open the door, or disconnected totally (i.e., if you
have a external drive with a terminator plugged into
the drive, but it's not connected to the computer, it
won't open)
-Ian