Vipersan wrote:

Also in the bundle were 4x DLT drives ..

Love those, too. I own 2 DLT tape libraries. One has a 5-cartridge magazine with 100 GB in total (made in 1996 and powered by a Z80!), the other one even takes 10 cartridges. Also have an original Seagate LTO-1 Ultrium drive. While I have DAT DSS drives too, I don't use these anymore.

derSammler wrote:

Vipersan wrote:

Also in the bundle were 4x DLT drives ..

Love those, too. I own 2 DLT tape libraries. One has a 5-cartridge magazine with 100 GB in total (made in 1996 and powered by a Z80!), the other one even takes 10 cartridges. Also have an original Seagate LTO-1 Ultrium drive. While I have DAT DSS drives too, I don't use these anymore.

Glad to hear of a kindred spirit ..
I have one drive I'm having trouble identifying ..and I certainly dont have any way to connect it ..
(proprietory)
I'll grab a photo later ..
perhaps you can help me with this one ?
photo later...

Maybe, let's wait for the photo.

Here's one of my DLT libraries, btw:
http://retro-net.de/sonstiges.html

Thanx for the link..
A thing of beauty imo..
😉

As promised ..a couple of photos of this HP DLT ..
cannot find a model number ..
I guess it is DLT5 ?
not sure which tape cart is supported ..
No idea what the rear connector is ..though obviously a wide scsi variation.
rgds
VS

That's LVD SCSI (low-voltage differential). You need a corresponding SCSI controller for that. Don't try to connect it to an ordinary ("high-voltage") SCSI controller, as it will cause damage to the device and/or the controller.

Internally, however, that drive probably uses normal Fast Wide SCSI. The LVD interface seems to be on a swappable module. I know quite a few HP DLT drives, but I can't recognize that one. It must be one of the earlier ones, as later ones had DLT followed by a number.

I figured it was unusual & ..
Glad I asked ...
At least wont be connecting it up and causing damage now..
cheers.

I have a tape drive, don't know the brand and never had the tapes themselves... It's 50-pin SCSI (internal, has the form factor of a 5.25" FDD), came from a 486 machine back in the 90s. Have the controller card for it too, an AHA1542CF. But since I have no idea what kind of tapes go with it, never tried to use it.

Still have my SCSI Wnagtek 51000HT QIC drive and a few tapes (some still sealed)

My current 486 has a 3.5in Conner QIC tape drive that IIRC plugs into the floppy drive controller and presumably uses special software/drivers to access it. I cannot say for certain though, because I have it disconnected (It was installed merely for cosmetic reasons, since this is an almost-exact recreation of a 486 system from my childhood that also had a nonfunctional Conner QIC drive installed).

I have quite a few tape drives in my collection. The LTO-2 and LTO-2 drives are what I use to backup my files but I do play around with the older ones with vintage systems.

I have all kinds of QIC drives from the common 120MB models to the last gasp SLR Tandberg drives (50/100GB).
Other types include AIT, DDS 1,2,3,4, DAT 72 (DDS5), DLT,and LTO varieties. Most are single tape drives but I also have a bunch of auto changers for DDS1, AIT, LTO, and DLT.

I am considering an LTO drive at some point ..
but the thought of expensive windows software puts me off ..
So with LTO I would wnt access to the tape content on say XP and win7 at file level for archiving ...not neccessarily OS backup.
What is out there software wise that will suit me ..that doesn't require I take out a second mortgage ?
rgds
VS

It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who thinks tape drives are fun, too. 🤣

I haven't paid anything for them, but I have a couple. A floppy controller based 3GB HP Colorado Travan unit and a SCSI 8GB HP Surestore DAT8. They are hand me downs from an office that I upgraded their servers (2000-2001) for free.

I also had a QIC drive (Colorado 120 IIRC) in the past in my main rig, purchased around 1995-1996, that I used several years till I purchased my first CD writer.

You can see the ones that I have installed in my rigs, with no aparent purpose other than them being fun 🤣

Re: Show off your beige computer cases here

Vipersan wrote:

I--
VS

I am too new to send you a private message. Hope I ain't hijacking anyone's thread but I would like to speak with you in regards to your past retro upgrades.

How do your tape libraries work? Has anyone worked with those exotic machines with robot arms and rows and rows of tapes?

They work in a very simple way: LUN 0 will let the software see the whole tape magazine as one large tape. Using a LUN higher than 0 will address that tape directly. That's it.

The drive pictured is ment to be used in a special HP SCSI enclosure, got some SCSI DVD drives having the same strange connector.
Therefore it features this blue eject lever on the bottom of the drive.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-C4317A-RACK-MOUNT- … 5-/272409890168

If you want to use the drive without purchasing the enclosure, best is to swap it to a different case or connect a short ribbon cable to the usual internal wide SCSI connector.
The drive looks like a 35/70 GB DLT 4 drive.
Some good info on DLT drives was at http://www.useddlt.com, but it seemes to be taken over.

I like tape drives a lot, but never used one of these floppy tape streamers or any of my DAT-drives.
Switched from full size QIC drives with 150, 250, 525, 1GB to DLT and a single 8mm IBM drive.
Still have a bunch of Wangtek, Archive and Tandberg drives, even the old 60MB QIC02 drives with te proprietary interface board.
I managed to use it under LINUX 20 years ago

tayyare wrote:

It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who thinks tape drives are fun, too. 🤣

I haven't paid anything for them, but I have a couple. A floppy controller based 3GB HP Colorado Travan unit and a SCSI 8GB HP Surestore DAT8. They are hand me downs from an office that I upgraded their servers (2000-2001) for free.

I also had a QIC drive (Colorado 120 IIRC) in the past in my main rig, purchased around 1995-1996, that I used several years till I purchased my first CD writer.

Ugh Travan.... How are your tapes holding up? I had the pleasure of doing a data analysis on 4x unknown Travan tapes for my work last week...3 out of the 4 had broken internal belts (for those of you unfamiliar with Travan, belts are inside the tape!) And these where newer 20/40gb versions from 2003...

DAT/DDS in the little tapes and LTO in the big where always the best...

Vipersan wrote:

I recently purchased 10 tape drives as a job lot on ebay .. Amongst them were a couple of DAT DDS2 ,DDS3 and DDS4 which was the […]
Show full quote

I recently purchased 10 tape drives as a job lot on ebay ..
Amongst them were a couple of DAT DDS2 ,DDS3 and DDS4
which was the real reason for the purchase ..
Yes I do use DD4 with my retro systems ..
I use Veritas software with desktop version of backup exec ..
Thus I can backup entire system builds ..or just games folders etc.
I do love playing with scsi.
What I dont love so much are the multitude of interfaces they use ..
50 pin 68 pin ..wide ..ultra wide ..and worse ..
proprietrory connectors ...
Also in the bundle were 4x DLT drives ..
I have no tapes to test these (yet)..nor have I any experience of using these drives ...so playing with those should be fun..
There are various brands in the mix ...Sun ..Compaq ..HP ..etc ..
sadly no Sony DATs which are my prefered drives.
That said ..10 drives for £30 delivered is imo good value ...since I already got the DDS4 drive units working ..plus one of the DDS3.
The external cases are aso useful even if the drives end up scrapped since they have built in 5/12v molex psus.
rgds
VS

I think I still have some Sun Microsystems scsi tape drives, HP scsi dat, and some internal dats.
I remember working with large tape libraries too.
They are all but gone.

HP Omniback
Sun Backup
Net backup
Legato backup
MS backup
Novell backup
Symantec Backup
Veritas backup
Tar -xvf