Mr Ian Primus wrote:
[Snip]
So, anyone have a good source of these critters? I remember buying a few boxes many years
ago (back when the Zip drive was the great new thing) from an online media store, and
paying about five bucks apiece for brand new 128mb cartridges. Surely the prices should
have come down, but the the cheapest I can find them is $7 each. I'd really like to
just buy some used cartridges, but I guess the used media market isn't what it was, I
don't really even see used tapes much anymore.
So, anyone know of a source of 128mb, 230mb, 540mb or 640mb 3 1/2" disks, or the
600mb 5 1/4" disks?
Jerome Fine replies:
I have at least 100 of the 5 1/4" 600 MB disks. They have 512 bytes per
sector,
which is probably the type you are looking for. Note that they are actually
double sided with 295 MB per side or 590 MB total capacity while the
drives are able to read / write ONLY one side at a time.
Note that shipping will be from Toronto, Ontario which is probably much more
expensive than USPS within the US.
As for tapes, I also have a number of TK70 tapes which are probably good,
although I have not used them for a few years. The TK70 tapes can also be
used on a TK50 if they are bulk erased first.
Contact me off list if you want and MO disks or the tapes.
I also have a number of the drives, specifically Sony SMO S-501. The
interface
for the drives is standard SCSI and each drive can be set as drive 0 to
3, if I
remember correctly. The drive interface has the standard 50 pin
external centronics
male connector.
At the moment, I still use the drives to transfer between a PDP-11 and a
PC with
both running RT-11 (with the PC running RT-11 using Ersatz-11). I hope
to still be
able to use the drives when I upgrade to a new PC with Windows XP some time
next year. I have successfully run RT-11 using Ersatz-11 under Windows
XP, but
I don't know if I can also use the Sony SMO S-501 drives as well. If
successful,
I will discard the old PC running Windows 98SE.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine