8 Feb
2002
8 Feb
'02
8:53 a.m.
On Fri, 8 Feb 2002, Tothwolf wrote:
You might end up having to build more than one
computer. I've been playing
with the idea of setting up something like this myself.
I was considering this tonight. I'll probably make a separate box with
just SCSI devices, so I can easily mount those and then install a 10base2
network between the two boxes so I can easily access those drives from the
box with the tape drives. SInce my whole setup will most likely be
DOS-based, I can use a simple P2P LAN such as LANtastic (LANtastic was
very cool for what it was in its day).
Might want to add a Bernoulli 44MB to your list of
drives. Those were very
Yes, well the 10 megger I mentioned may well be a 44 megger. I didn't pay
closer attention to it.
common for quite awhile. I believe there may have also
been a 20MB and
150MB Bernoulli drive. Do you have a controller for the 10MB drive? IIRC,
I'll definitely want all the various types if the larger ones are not
backward compatible. From what I understand, Bernoulli 230 drives can
not read Bernoulli 150 drives. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't yet have a controller for any of these drives, so am in need.
those need a special interface board to function. I
also seem to remember
some of the Bernoulli drives would not work properly on anything faster
than a 386 or 486. I have a dual 10MB stored away somewhere, but I don't
think I have books for it. I may have an extra interface board somewhere.
The 44MB version also uses an interface board, but I'm not familiar with
the 20 or 150MB drives.
The drive I am getting is a dual drive, so maybe it is a 10 megger after
all.
For drives that use the floppy interface, you'll
have to connect them one
at a time. You also can't use the floppy drive at the same time as the
tape drive, unless you put the tape drive on a dedicated second
controller. Not all tape drive software will support that configuration,
tho.
Of course. I used this sort of tape drive extensively with the Colorado.
But you'll never be going from tape to floppy or vice versa. And if you
had to, you'd of course dump to the HD first and then out to floppy.
I don't know about pictures, but I did some
searches on QIC-24 drives a
few weeks ago with Google and turned up a few incomplete charts and some
emails from various list archives. I believe there are 6-8 basic drive
types for QIC-11/QIC-24/QIC-15/etc.
I need those 6-8 drives then ;)
You'll likely want to get some of the other models
of Colorado Jumbo
drives too. The later drives can often read some of the other density
tapes, but can't write to them. The most reliable drive to use would
ideally be the same type as they were originally written with. There were
literally 100s of different DC2000 drives made over the years. A large
number of them used their own tape format, so you'll end up requiring alot
of different drives if you plan to support them all.
Well, I got to if it's to be worth while. The idea is to create one ready
to use super box that can convert from just about anything to just about
anything else without requiring a long search for the right drives,
software, and hardware for the media in question. The emphasis is on
just reading the data which will eventually go to CD-R. So it's important
to be able to read just about anything, but writing isn't as critical.
Usually when someone wants data converted these days, they want it on CD
or 3.5" floppy.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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