QIC-40 tape drive long-shot \ VOGONS

QIC-40 tape drive long-shot

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First post, by stepleton

Posted on 2025-10-21, 00:09

stepleton Offline

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30 years ago I had an old 386 with a Colorado QIC-40 tape drive in it, the kind that you connect with a floppy cable. With patience, I got Linux running on that 386 and used the ftape driver (still maintained!) to back up my Linux files. Exciting stuff, using tar with a real tape drive...

Today the 386 is gone and I have a lovely 5170 as my only PC with a floppy interface. I spotted the same old Colorado tape drive at RE-PC in Seattle a while back and packed it into my luggage for the trip back to London.

I'm delighted to find that the old junk bin tape drive works, and so does an old tape of DOS stuff that I backed up in the '90s using Colorado's own backup software. But I'd like to try and recover the tar tapes as well if I can. The problem is that my 5170 is not going to be running Linux anytime soon, and Colorado's software understandably has no idea what to do with the data tar has put on the tape.

I think odds are high that if I can just stream the data off of the tape into a file somehow, then tar on a modern linux machine ought to be able to read it. I suppose my question is: is anyone aware of a DOS program that can stream data sequentially off of a QIC-40 tape? (I know this could be dependent on format details, but any leads are helpful for a start...

Alternatively, is anyone aware of whether flux imagers like Greaseweazle etc. can drive one of these old tape drives? I suppose the ftape driver might offer some clues...

Reply 1 of 2, by vetz

Posted on 2025-10-21, 06:05

vetz Offline

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I tried to backup some old tapes about a year ago. I just want to warn you that the rubber band inside the cartridge might need replacement. I didn't check and two of my tapes got destroyed in the tape drive as a result.

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Reply 2 of 2, by dmitrybrant

Posted on Yesterday, 00:25

dmitrybrant Offline

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Hello! Unfortunately I'm not aware of any DOS utilities that are able to dump the raw binary contents of these tapes. And using a Greaseweazle is also a non-starter, since the Greaseweazle is built specifically to interact with floppy drives, and the corresponding geometry and data formatting of floppies.
These types of QIC tape drives (Colorado, etc) are much "smarter" than floppy drives, and do not let the floppy controller access the raw flux signals, and only output actual data blocks. In theory, you would need to build a whole new Greaseweazle-like device that replaces the firmware chip on the tape drive itself.

In any case, the ftape driver is still the best way to go, and you'll simply need to find a modern-ish Linux box to plug in your tape drive and dump the tapes. (Or I'd be happy to have a look, if you fancy sending them over.)
(If you attempt it yourself, make sure to replace those tension bands, even if they appear intact!)

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