Archive 5945C tape drive - Emulex or Adaptec interface board?

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue Jul 13 16:08:11 2004

Amongst a box of Acorn floppies that I got hold of the other day I found
several DC600 tape cartridges.

I thought it might be useful to see if I can get any data off them (I
have no idea what's on them, if they're still readable, or what format
any data on them is in - I know, I know... :)

Paths scribbled on some suggest they came from some variety of Unix
machine, so chances are they're tar format.

Now, in the loft I have a pair of Archive 5945C 60MB drives which I
didn't have the heart to throw out. God knows if they work or not. I
know, I know...

They're QIC-36 interface drives apparently. This is where I do the
hand-waving stuff as I start to get out of my depth (my only tape
experience is with modern DLT and DAT drives)

I happen to have a whole box of stray interface boards with SCSI at one
end and various other interfaces at the other. Included in these are
Adaptec 3530GA's and Emulex MW0210402's, both of which I think bridge
SCSI to QIC-36. No, I don't know if *those* work either...

Question is, are these boards interchangable? Or in order to stand a
chance of reading these tapes, do I need to know what board was
originally used (and even which drive!) in order to write them?

Furthermore, just because the drive's then on the SCSI bus, can I expect
it to just appear as a modern SCSI tape unit does (i.e. if I can drive a
DLT or DAT drive from my Unix OS, should the same be true of these
controller boards / ancient drives)?

I have the Adaptec 3530A manual, which suggests it's just a plug in and
go solution (but I have no idea how the GA series boards that I have
differ from the A series)

Thoughts welcome, before I go trying to cable everything up!

cheers

Jules
Received on Tue Jul 13 2004 - 16:08:11 BST