#Which tape drive?
17 messages in this thread
I have been using the Touchdown tape drive (Caliper CP-150) for a
couple of years and it has never had a problem and recommend it
highly. I smoke and live in a very dusty area and this has had no
effect on the drive. Plus once you use a tape drive there is no
going back to disks (yuk).
Thanks for the input Eddie. What tapes do you use on the Touchdown?
Did it come with a SCSI cable? A tape? How much do the tapes go
for? So far you've been more help than the people that are trying to
sell it. Go figure.
The Touchdown comes with a 25-pin to 50-pin SCSI cable but no tape
and handles 150 or 250 Mbytes capacity tapes. I have been using FUJI
DC 6150 tapes, MAC Warehouse gets $24.00, I think I have seen them
slighly cheaper but I like MAC w's fast shipping.. The drive is
terminated so it has to be the last unit on the SCSI chain, which in
my case is now a problem as I have added a external CD-Rom drive and
it is also terminated. To change the SCSI ID (if needed) you will
have to open the case to get at the dip switches. There are
instructions in the manual for doing this and its not hard to do. QB
has a macro for doing multi partitions on one tape, but I have never
been able to get it to work and judging by the postings, I'm not
alone there. The drive worked with my A-3000 and now with the 4000
using a 2091 controller.
The best thing about a tape drive is that its always there attached to
the computer, flip the power switch and your in business. No looking
for 200+ disks and then sitting there feeding the disks into the
drive. You can restore the whole HD or just a file in a matter of
minutes…
Thanks for the info Eddie. That was exactly what I wanted to know.
I saw where your also interested in the 3070, check out the Grapevine
Group ad in the Sept AW issue. Under factory direct surplus, they have
the 3070 for $299..95. The only thing is it might be new or factory
refurbished with a 90 day warranty..
Eddie,
actually, they've lowered the price to $229.95. Very reasonable, even
if it is a rebuild.
Brian
Brian.. Sounds great, at that price I might buy one. When I bought
my 4000 I gave my 3000 to a couple of kids and they are always losing
programs and files so I end up having to take my tape drive over to
their house to backup or restore the HD. This way I go for the 3070
and teach their dad how to run it and save myself some wear and
tear.. One thing that has gotten me curious is that both the
Touchdown and the 3070 both use the same drive, so would a tape made
on one be compatable on the other????? I have a large PD collection
and this might be a great way to move them around…
Actually, since we are not in the MS-DOS world, a tape made on ANY drive
which writes the standard 150/250 meg tapes (the 250 is just a longer
tape, same data format) would be compatible.
I will have just uploaded (AP don't fail me now) Matt Dillon's SCSI tape
handler which will also let you read/write UNIX format tapes on any tape
drive with GNU TAR (included.) I've used these programs to transfer tapes
between my Amiga and my RS/6000 workstation at work using a Tandberg
drive. We also get tapes from vendors written on different drives and have
no trouble reading them with our equipment.
SCSI is an ANSI standard. QIC-120 and QIC-150 are also standards.
Therefore, it doesn't matter whose drive you wrote with and whose you read
with. Except, of course, in Proprietary Land of MS-DOS where there isn't
even a standard device driver for SCSI. (Was trying to hook up the tape to
my mom's machine. Aiieeeeee!)
Actually, SCSI on the PC does have a standard called ASPI that's become quite
prevalent.
ASPI is an Adaptec standard and it is prevalent because they have a
stranglehold on the PC SCSI market. It is far from being an adopted
standard by general hardware population at large.
-Jonathan
John,
I have a SCSI interface for my Toshiba notebook computer, and it came with
ASPI drivers for various CDROM drives and for a hard drive – but not for a
tape drive. Do you know what I would have to do to make my Amiga 3070
tape drive work with the Toshiba?
—Betty
A friend with PC decided to buy one of the tape drives that connects to
the floppy bus after trying to no avail to find a way to use a SCSI tape
drive. It seems that the floppy-tapes are so cheap that nobody bothered
to write SCSI backup software…
Dale Larson
– An Amiga Software Engineer with some time on his hands.
I have been told that the software CorelSCSI has a tape backup program,
and that Trantor also has one to go with their SCSI devices – and that
both pieces of software can be purchased separately. But I cannot locate
a source of the software.
Thanks, anyway. At least, I'm not the only one having problems with it.
—Betty
Betty,
Call Corel at 1-800-836-SCSI for the dealer nearest you <grin>.
Don
In the Unix Forum here on Compuserve, there is a very good freely distributable
ASPI tape driver. It's called ASPITAPE.SYS. By the same author is a 'tar' for
the PC, and I use it often to share tapes between the PC and Amiga. I don't
guarantee that it will work with the 3070, though. It might! And the author
is online regularly, too. I seem to remember that the SCSI tape drive commands
are fairly standard, so it might work.
Thanks, John. I'll get it right away.
—Betty
John,
I *believe* that ASPI is the interface (device driver) 'standard', not
a hardware standard. The hardware should conform to the ANSI standard (with
CCS extensions).
Don