Drive inventory

Ok, I scored quite a few drives for my data conversion machine project yesterday: Iomega Ditto Easy3200 (floppy interface) Colorado T4000 (SCSI) Exabyte EXB-8200 (SCSI) Bernoulli Box 20+20 (DC-37 proprietary?) WORM Drive of some type (SCSI) QIC-150 tape drive (SCSI) Iomega 150 MultiDisk (SCSI) Iomega 90 Pro (SCSI) DAT of some type (SCSI) Iomega Jaz (SCSI) Iomega ZIP (IDE) Conner 420 (floppy interface) Colorado 250 (floppy interface) Archive 4320NT DAT (SCSI) Conner 700 (floppy interface) Colorado T1000 (floppy) SyQuest EZ135 (SCSI) The trick now is to figure out what is downward compatible with what and eliminate those drives. The Conner 700 is obviously compatible with the 420, the Colorado T4000 is probably downward compatible with the T1000, the Iomega 150 is downward compatible with the 90, I think the Ditto drive is basically the same as the Colorado Jumbo drives and the Conners, so I would want to choose the one that is most downward compatible in terms of maximum storage. 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). Did the Bernoulli Box have a proprietary interface? If so, does anyone have one they want to get rid of? I would imagine I can hook as many of the floppy interface drives as I need to a single cable, providing I can crimp on the proper connectors. Will there be any issues with conflicts or power? I imagine as long as I'm not using two drives on the same cable at a time then I should be fine. I think I have QIC-40/80 covered. My Tecmar QT-125e does QIC-2 up to 125MB, but from what I can tell from research that standard goes up to at least 500MB. I'm still trying to figure out what QIC-1000 is. Tecmar is still around (www.tecmar.com) but they only do Travan and DAT. Their older products (QIC and 8MM) are obsolete and they don't have drivers available. 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? -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *