Anyone know of Sun Voyager bag reading 9 track tapes?

[ethan at 757.org]

> Horrific hijacking topic-drift but I remember your name from a recent
> google... ages ago you were trying to get an IBM 9348 9-track working
> with a USB to SCSI converter... did you succeed? What did you use? I'm
> in exactly the same position!
> Thanks
> Mike

*AWESOME* You just reminded me of a project I need to get back to. Yea I 
was planning to use it as media storage for car audio (storing music on 9 
track tape.)

I have the drive still. I managed to get a SE to DIFF converter board and 
boxes. IIRC I bought one, then ended up with more from a SGI computer 
haul. The tape drive has a board internally that comes in both a SE and 
DIFF version, but the SE board was way more than the cost of a converter 
which should just be some simple logic chips or op amps or whatever.

I bought some tapes from eBay for the project, have those nearby.

The USB to SCSI adapter I had -- I think the trick to it is it could only 
handle 1 device, and the SCSI ID had to be 0 or 1. I still haven't but 
haven't used it.

These days, if I revist the project, I'd probably go with an ACARD or 
modern similar device that does IDE To SCSI bridging.

I have no idea how tape drives work, and how those little bridge gadgets 
handle forwarding SCSI CDB and other data. Are they only meant for hard 
drives? Could NetBSD unix tape commands work with the drive? Not really 
sure.

The drive is in Norfolk in storage.

So I got all the parts, then never got around to making it go. One thing 
was all the cables needed since it was like 68 to 68 then 68 to 50 then 50 
to 25 to use the USB thing. I never settled on the playback board, now 
there are way more options!

At one point I even had permission from the 80s band Information Society 
to use there song "Where would we be without IBM" in a video of the whole 
thing. Hmp.



--
Ethan O'Toole