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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!netnews.nwnet.net!symiserver2.symantec.com!usenet From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Tape drive suggestions??? Date: 13 Jul 1996 07:11:18 GMT Organization: Symantec Corporation Lines: 62 Message-ID: <4s7i6m$j0t@symiserver2.symantec.com> References: <4ru18i$mll@mitzi.rsmas.miami.edu> <4s13f4$avo@uriah.heep.sax.de> Reply-To: tedm%toybox@agora.rdrop.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.6.34.1 X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2 In <4s13f4$avo@uriah.heep.sax.de>, j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) writes: [deleted] >If you don't have much money to spend, try to get some used stuff. An >old Archive Viper 150 should not be very expensive these days, but is >rock-solid technology which will most likely run flawlessly yet >another five years. This drive (and the Wangtek ES5150) is available >as either SCSI, or with a separate QIC-02 interface card. While the Actually, the model numbers are: 5150ES is the SCSI version 5150EQ is the QIC-02 version 5150EN is the QIC-36 version I have both of these drives in different machines and in my opinion they are the greatest tapedrives ever produced. The things are cheap and plentiful as they were used in ancient, hoary mini computers that are being broken up for scrap these days, and virtually indestructible. And, talk about indestructible the tape cartridges themselves can be thrown off a bridge and still work reliably. One caveat is you want to get the FaxBack document from Rexon I believe is who owns both Archive and Wangtek these days and familiarize yourself with the different PC board revisions on the drives themselves. The older 5150's didn't support QFA which can be painful if your attempting to retrieve ONE file near the end of the tape. They will still work great, though, and if you find a stack of drives for a song grab and ask questions later. Try to get the SCSI version if possible, of course. Be careful with QIC cards. There are two kinds, a QIC-02, and a QIC-36 card. Both work with the driver, but the 5150EQ won't work on a QIC-36 card and the 5150EN won't work with a QIC-02 card. The drive connectors are identical, unfortunately, so read the model numbers carefully. Another problem I've found with the SCSI versions is that they really only like SCSI-1, which means maximum of 5Mbts and asynchronous only. So, use them on a separate cheap controller (like a ST01, FDC 950, etc) or on a controller that allows you to control the negotiation on a per-ID basis. Media is easy to find, here we have surplus places that have barrels of the QIC tapes for real cheap. Another great thing with these is the heads, motors, and circuit boards are all interchangeable between the ES, EN & EQ. If you get a stack of these that are "broken" you can probably assemble a working drive by mixing and matching parts, that's how one of mine got together. Another wonderful thing is that all these drives read each others tapes quite well, you can TAR off a file with TAR for DOS, or TAR for OS/2 and read it on a Unix system, etc. In fact, I've even used TAR for DOS in a DOS window under Win95 with a 5150ES and it worked great. The ES, EN and EQ all read each other's media. In fact, most of the QIC drives (Tandberg, Archive, etc) read each other's media very well. This is in stark contract to those garbage QIC-80 floppy-tape drives. Don't be put off by the 250MB capacity limit, unless your developing kernel sources of course, as not a lot in a Unix system is worth backing up, and 250MB is plenty unless you have a ton of users on the machine. Ted