ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sat Jan 19 17:29:15 2002

Just exactly what do you want from a "driver" for a tape drive?

Generally, what's wanted from tape drives is that they function with a backup
applicaiton. If you are running a form of Windows, you ABSOUTELY don't want
Windows to see the tape drive as a block I/O device, because what it will want
to do is P*SS on it every second or so. It also tells everybody who's
interested that the drive is out there, so any viruses can quickly infect the
thing.

There's a program called Tapedisk that allows viruses to infect your tape,
since it makes the tape look like a disk drive. Seagate's Direct Tape Access
works like that, too, only better. It allows you to write and read the tape,
but it doesn't recover space left by erased files. eventually you have to
read, erase, and write back.

If you have a backup application that knows what to do with SCSI tape drives,
it should work with it just fine. Keep in mind, however, that the BACKUP that
comes with Win95 doesn't recognize SCSI tape drives. The version that comes
with Win98 does, however, as does the one with NT4. If you want Windows95 to
use the drive for backup, it needs a 3rd part application that works with SCSI
tape, and there are precious few of those. Seagate Backup Executive is one
that does, sort-of, though almost no backup applications work well with
Windows. Many claim to work, but later turn out to be write-only memory.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Hudson" <rhudson_at_cnonline.net>
To: "Classic Computers Mailing list" <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 3:11 PM
Subject: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95


> sorry, ot....
>
> Although, this tape drive may be older than 10 years.. :^)
>
> I am trying to make a Tandberg TDC 3800 tape drive work with
> windows 95 (in a 485 machine). The scsi card sees the tape
> drive and windows finds new hardware but has no driver.
>
> I have googled all over and can't seem to find a windows
> driver for this at all. :^(
>
> can anyone help?
>
> grovel grover for off topic post.
>
>
>
Received on Sat Jan 19 2002 - 17:29:15 GMT