Making a bootable LIF CD for the 9000/382

[Al Kossow]

If it hasn't been used recently, it is a certainty the capstan is goo.

A friend helped me make a new capstan for one of the 9145s that I have, it
worked until the logic croaked. I was able to load exactly ONE tape before
it died. I'm in the process of buying a refurbished one from 360 Technologies
just so I know I have one tested working one.

This is a huge PITA for me at CHM, because HP gave us literally hundreds of
tapes. I also note the extreme lack of 914x tape images anywhere. I haven't
dug into them enough to understand even how to image them. They are block
addressable, but have file marks. This is sort of like QIC tapes, though I
haven't gotten into it far enough to know if the tape mark is an out of band
(sits between a block) or consumes one.

When Crisis Computer closed down, I tried reading a few, with pretty poor
results. Even after changing the band, most just faulted.

Recently I read the HP Journal article on the 9145, and one of the things they
did was use special textured belts in their cartridges to make them work at 120ips
The Journal also makes it sound like the things were WAY over-engineered.


On 7/6/18 4:44 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote:
> This brings up an interesting question. For those of us with a 9000/300 but
> no SCSI (my 350 is strictly HP-IB), I've still had no joy ever getting a
> 9144A to work. I'm going to get another tape drive from Stan when I can get
> a chance to pick it up, but has anyone booted one of these off floppy?
>