Ah, no biggie--I have other Exabyte drives that will handle 8205 tapes. The 8200 that I have isn't a bare drive--it's in a "Contemporary Cybernetics" external box, complete with linear PSU and 2-line LCD display. The display seems to be controlled by what looks to be an 8051 connected via a 3-wire cable to the drive. It's interesting--lets you know, for example, how much tape you have left as you're writing, how many MB you've written and the current operation. However, on the subject of compression and 8200/8500 drives, I found the following thread on the Sun Managers list from 1992: http://www.sunmanagers.org/archives/1992/0017.html which mentions external third-party compression modules for the Exabytes. This is the first time I've heard of this--does anyone know anything about it? Nothing like being 16 years behind the time. :) Cheers, Chuck