Drive inventory

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Thu Feb 14 10:38:56 2002

Careful, now ... EXABYTE drives are 8mm helical-scan drives, while the DDS
types are not. I have a number of Exabyte drives and I've found that, after
the EXB8200, few of them will use tapes that aren't of the "DATA" type. I've
tried standard handycam tapes, and the %$#_at_! things immediately spit them out!
Likewise, the cleaning tapes, which puzzles me a great deal. I've had no such
trouble with SONY cleaning tapes, however, probably because EXABYTE buys SONY
transports.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Smith" <csmith_at_amdocs.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 9:03 AM
Subject: RE: Drive inventory


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Vintage Computer Festival [mailto:vcf_at_vintage.org]
>
> > 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).
>
> Basically, there are DDS-1 through DDS-4. A DDS-4 drive should read
> and write any of the previous if I'm not mistaken. The problem is
> that compression is brand-specific, generally, and possibly model-
> specific (though I haven't heard of it being done...)
>
> In other words, if your tape has hardware compression, you may be out
> of luck without the exact drive that wrote it.
>
> I have no idea about D-8, on the other hand. :) What I do know is
> that my Eliant 820 will use 160 meter tapes, but only (I think) if
> they're data tapes (meaning they have the MRS stuff in them...) Some
> other Exabyte drives will supposedly use 160 meter tapes without MRS,
> but will write only so much data to them, and won't read or write data
> on any 160 meter cart at quite the density of the Eliant 820.
>
> Anyway, you may need more than 1 8mm drive.
>
> > Did the Bernoulli Box have a proprietary interface? If so,
> > does anyone
> > have one they want to get rid of?
>
> I think they were SCSI, but don't take my word for it...
>
> > least 500MB. I'm still trying to figure out what QIC-1000 is.
>
> 1.2G variant of the same technology used in QIC-120, I believe.
> They're pretty large, klunky cartridges. Around the size of VHS,
> but thinner, and not quite as wide (I think). :) I also think the
> drives are downward compatible with QIC-120.
>
> > I guess what I really want to know is if the various tape drives from
> > different manufacturers for a certain specification, say
> > QIC-40/80, read
> > and write the same low- or high-level format. So for instance, if I
> > create a tape on a Colorado drive and stick it into a Conner
> > drive, will
> > the Conner be able to read it?
>
> I think so, ignoring the above issue with hardware compression, which
> may have also been a problem on these drives if they had it. :) Again,
> don't take my word for it.
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
> Amdocs - Champaign, IL
>
> /usr/bin/perl -e '
> print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
> '
>
>
>
Received on Thu Feb 14 2002 - 10:38:56 GMT