Apollo DN3xxx 3Com Ethernet Card Find / QIC Tape Misery

As an FYI, I recently purchased an Ethernet card, 3Com Assembly number 2012-01 (I believe this is a 3c505). It works perfectly. I am now in the process of attempting to read in as many of the (over 100, maybe 50 or so without duplicates) tape cartridges as I can, and will forward them off to Al Kossow that CHM when I get them read (presumably on a DVD). The biggest issue with the tapes is that Apollo used some pretty cheap cartridges at time to deliver software (after all, why should they need to last?? 8^)), and the little rubber belts inside the QIC-24 cartridges have gone bad in many of them. Fortunately, I have some relatively newer 3M DC600 cartridges that I can use to supply a substitute belt, and when done carefully (e.g., first manually rewind the cartridge PAST the load point (but not past the end!) before switching the belt to avoid problems) seems to be working. Unfortunately, I blarched a set of SR10.2 install media learning all of this. 8^P) But, I just read in a tape of 12MB successfully after doing a belt replacement (a tape with DPCI software, I think - it is still in the drive). In addition, many of the tapes I have were left in the middle, which seems to present data readability issues. We'll see. You can find these Ethernet cards on: EBay right now has two of them: http://www.ebay.com/itm/3COM-ISA-Ethernet-Card-2012-00-RevB-/350290188652?p… http://www.ebay.com/itm/3Com-2012-16-Bit-ISA-Ethernet-Coax-Network-Card-/19… And also at Pinnacle Micro / EZ-Systems may also still have some. Part number ASSY-2012-01 "ASSY-2012-01 3Com Refurbished Assembly 201201 ETHERLINK 16 BIT 30 Day Warranty" They are $28.75 from Pinnacle, but the minimum with shipping is $50, so you end up paying $50. Suggest adding a comment that you do indeed want the "LONG version of the card" (they called me to confirm that). I got mine there because they offer a 30 day warranty (at least on the one I bought), which is what motivated me to drag out my DN3000 and try and read some tapes and FTP the files and test them with the DN3xxx emulator inside of the "mess" simulator. Even one of the bad SR10.2 boot tapes I could at least boot from after the transfer, and enough of the tape was there that some of the programs would run (e.g., calendar, invol, config all ran). I saw at least one card somewhere else on the net for a reasonable price, but I forget where. JRJ