Piper wrote on 2023-01-04, 02:50:

Hello, I have tried everything I can think of to get my tape drives working under Windows 98. They seem to work fine under something like Windows XP. The problem is the backup software will only detect one drive and even though it will read the files, it doesn't actually load. Once it finishes identifying, it won't load the backup so it's useless. Here's some more details:

I have dual Adaptec AHA-2940U/AHA-2940UW PCI SCSI cards. The BIOS for both of them are on the correct settings. I'm not really sure what the tape drives are. Windows and the SCSI BIOS reports them as ARCHIVE Python 04106-XXX. Just now I attempted to use just one SCSI card and daisy chain the tape drives which made no difference.

Why dual and Which card ? a 2940U is not a 2940UW. 2940U is only standard 50 pin, the 2940UW is 68pin wide+50 pin. Not the same....
You do not terminate both drives. Only the the end drive (of each cable) should be terminated !!
Which ever is at end of cable is terminated OR you do not term either and at end of cable use as "active" termination block.
And "most" Tape drives like cdrom should have ID's from 3 to 6 since they are not "wide".
I suggest trying one tape drive first. Once you get it working then add the other tape drive.
added: is the software for Win98 the exact same as for XP ?

I'm pretty new to using SCSI, I've had the stuff lying around for some time and just now have gotten around to using it. I was doing dual cards at first because I wasn't aware I could daisy chain them. And my bad, the cards are 2940UW, with the 68pin wide (internal and external) and 50pin (internal). I'm aware when I daisy chain them I only have to terminate the end drive, so that's what I did. I don't think I made that clear. The IDs for the drives are auto assigned and can't be changed, I can only change the card ID. The card ID is 7, the tape drives are 3 and 4. The software is not the same either. On XP I was using NT Backup, the tool built into Windows which is quite a bit different than what's on 98. I'll try one drive like you suggest and see if I can get it to read the tapes.

So I've made a little progress. I've been trying many more things, but the program that seems to work best so far is Veritas Backup Exec. I installed the tape drivers that came with it which are from year 2000 (98 comes with 1999 tape drivers). This allowed me to access the tapes and restore the backups. However, it only is working on one drive right now. When I put a tape in the other drive, it doesn't detect it. Also, I'm afraid if I close the program, it will delete the registry entry for the second device as it always has done in the past. Does anyone know what I can do to get the second drive working? I suppose I can use just one tape backup, honestly having two in the same system isn't very useful but I'd still like to figure out how to make it work.

Well I think I found some info. The Python 04106-xxxx DAT drive is a Seagate Scorpion 24 model STD224000N (internal) / STD624000N (external).
By going thru archives found the manuals and a page listing the supported software per OS. It lists Veritas 3.0a or 4.2 for support in Win98.
Here are the manuals: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … 1&menustate=0,0
and a link: http://web.archive.org/web/20010417130857/htt … s/std22400.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20010608125415/htt … s/std62400.html

FWIW: There is no "The IDs for the drives are auto assigned" for scsi devices, not even newer ones and the Scorpion 24 is a 2000 era DAT.
So... on the back of the enclosure should be a little switch box where you can change the ID. If not then you open the enclosure of one and check the back of the drive for jumpers and set the ID.
From the manual a picture of back of the external box: