All the DDS-x cartridges have holes in the bottom edge which the drive
senses to determine what write current, etc to use. Some older DDS-2
drives don't have enough sensor switches to detect DDS-3 media and
will treat them as DDS-1 media (binary, eh?). This means your 120m
tape is thought as 60m, but with the wrong write current so you get
lotsa errors too...
clint
On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>
> > > 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).
> >
> > Could you report your findings on the DAT formats? I'm really interested in
> > that!
>
> Here's what I've come up with.
>
> There are currently 5 DAT formats (DDS, DDS-1, DDS-2, DDS-3, and DDS-4)
> and all are backward compatible.
>
> According to this site:
>
> http://www.ls.eso.org/lasilla/Telescopes/2p2T/E2p2M/WFI/tapes/TapeType.html
>
> DDS-2 and DDS-3 use physically different media. I don't know how this
> figures if the standards are all supposed to be backward compatible.
>
> Here's a great page on backup tape in general:
>
> http://www.pctechguide.com/15tape.htm
>
> Here's a troubling statement I found on this webpage:
>
> "One of the drawbacks with QIC is incompatibility. The format has suffered
> from an overabundance of standards over the years - there are more than
> 120 currently - and not all QIC drives are compatible with all standards."
>
> Oy. Looks like I'll have to hang on to every single different tape drive
> I find to make sure I can recover any QIC formats that get thrown at me.
> At least until I find a definitive reference that tells me what drives can
> read what formats.
>
> 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 *
>
>
>
>
Received on Wed Feb 13 2002 - 23:15:50 GMT