14 Feb
2002
14 Feb
'02
2:38 a.m.
Careful, now ... EXABYTE drives are 8mm helical-scan drives, while the DDS
types are not. I have a number of Exabyte drives and I've found that, after
the EXB8200, few of them will use tapes that aren't of the "DATA" type.
I've
tried standard handycam tapes, and the %$#@! things immediately spit them out!
Likewise, the cleaning tapes, which puzzles me a great deal. I've had no such
trouble with SONY cleaning tapes, however, probably because EXABYTE buys SONY
transports.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Smith" <csmith(a)amdocs.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 9:03 AM
Subject: RE: Drive inventory
-----Original
Message-----
From: Vintage Computer Festival [mailto:vcf@vintage.org]
I have no idea what various DAT formats there are
so I'll
have to research
that. Ditto for the WORM drives (I have one more somewhere in my
collection).
Basically, there are DDS-1 through DDS-4. A DDS-4 drive should read
and write any of the previous if I'm not mistaken. The problem is
that compression is brand-specific, generally, and possibly model-
specific (though I haven't heard of it being done...)
In other words, if your tape has hardware compression, you may be out
of luck without the exact drive that wrote it.
I have no idea about D-8, on the other hand. :) What I do know is
that my Eliant 820 will use 160 meter tapes, but only (I think) if
they're data tapes (meaning they have the MRS stuff in them...) Some
other Exabyte drives will supposedly use 160 meter tapes without MRS,
but will write only so much data to them, and won't read or write data
on any 160 meter cart at quite the density of the Eliant 820.
Anyway, you may need more than 1 8mm drive.
Did the Bernoulli Box have a proprietary
interface? If so,
does anyone
have one they want to get rid of?
I think they were SCSI, but don't take my word for it...
least 500MB. I'm still trying to figure out
what QIC-1000 is.
1.2G variant of the same technology used in QIC-120, I believe.
They're pretty large, klunky cartridges. Around the size of VHS,
but thinner, and not quite as wide (I think). :) I also think the
drives are downward compatible with QIC-120.
I guess what I really want to know is if the
various tape drives from
different manufacturers for a certain specification, say
QIC-40/80, read
and write the same low- or high-level format. So for instance, if I
create a tape on a Colorado drive and stick it into a Conner
drive, will
the Conner be able to read it?
I think so, ignoring the above issue with hardware compression, which
may have also been a problem on these drives if they had it. :) Again,
don't take my word for it.
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
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Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'