From: sdw@meaddata.com (Stephen Williams) Subject: Re: Summary of: What tape drives work with Linux Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 15:14:01 GMT
der@hpuerca.atl.hp.com (Dave Ritchie) writes:
: In <BvAo5K.17zH@afsserv.boulder.ibm.com> carl@boxelder.Berkeley.EDU (Carl vonLoewenfeldt) writes:
:
: >It is my understanding that Colorado Memory Systems and Irwin backup
: >tape drives
: >attach, not via SCSI, but via the IDE connection already in use for the floppy
: >disk drives. They interpose themselves as a two-sided connection between tape
: >drive and cable, effectively daisy-chaining.
:
: Ouch.... floppy drives are not IDE interface -- they are the 34 pin
: Shugart connection that all 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" drives use. As I recall,
: the IDE interface is 40 pins....
:
: Having hooked up a QIC-40 drive a few weeks ago, you just hook the
: new cable into the controller and tape drive, and the old cable that
: formerly pluged into the controller plugs into a special socket on the
: new cable provided with the tape drive. Somehow, the floppies are
: turned off and the tape drive is driven by the floppy controller.
There is a select line for each floppy (4 on the cable, but most
controllers and no raw DOS (as far as I know) supports 2 of them) that
activates the electronics on the floppy.
What the newer versions of the Floppy-tape (what the interface seems
to be called most often) seem to do is turn off both select lines and
enable the drive ready (I'm thinking of the line that turns on the
spindle motor). This effectively adds an extra device to a Unary
select system.
I think the first floppy tapes would only work with one other floppy
drive.
I've had trouble getting the floppy tape driver (for irwin I think) in
my ISC 3.2R3 Unix to work with a 3rd device type of tape from Corel or
someone. The tape company said they had a driver, but wanted $100. I
only paid $120 for the drive.... So I just use it in DOS now....
:
: -- Dave Ritchie
: der@hpuerca.atl.hp.com