HP Tape drive for Christmas

So on the 24th I trucked up to Milwaukee (from Chicago) for
a $100 SGI
haul, the star of which was a working Crimson with three
hard drives.
Brought back the Crimson and some Indigo 2s (which will be
for
sale/trade/free as soon as I inventory them.)  There was
supposed to
be an O2 as well, but it went missing.  So for the
pre-arranged price
I asked to hunt around the shop for a replacement item,
which turned
out to be the back-breaking HP 88780B 9-Track Tape Drive!  A
fair
trade-up, I'd say.

So I've got it home and onto a table.   This may be old-hat
to some,
but having never used a 9-track before I have to say the
air-powered
self-threading mechanism is the coolest thing I've seen all
month.  I
loaded a blank tape for the self-test, which passes.  Now to
get it to
write some real data, and eventually use it to rescue some
old tapes
I've had for years as well as the one I bought at VCF.

I'm guessing that any modern *nix machine should recognize
it and be
able to read it.  I planned on using a Sparc IPX or
something
similarly portable when I get one formatted and loaded.  In
the
meantime, I have my laptop.  Is there any chance of getting
WinXP to
use this beast?  I have a SCSI PCMCIA card on the laptop
which I've
used to read old hard drives, but drivers will be the issue
here.  I
know in most cases the backup software needs to be able to
handle the
drive as well as the OS - anyone tried to use Backup Exec or
any of
the other big commercial s/w with one of these?

Thanks in advance...
-- 
jht

Yes, BSD and Most Linux's see it.    Win 98 and NT don't
always like 
9tracks for whatever reason, but XP works fine.       dd
works fine and 
you can install unix utils for XP and through a cmd window
run dd and 
access many tape contents.



Curt


Jason T wrote:
> So on the 24th I trucked up to Milwaukee (from Chicago)
for a $100 SGI
> haul, the star of which was a working Crimson with
three hard drives.
> Brought back the Crimson and some Indigo 2s (which will
be for
> sale/trade/free as soon as I inventory them.)  There
was supposed to
> be an O2 as well, but it went missing.  So for the
pre-arranged price
> I asked to hunt around the shop for a replacement item,
which turned
> out to be the back-breaking HP 88780B 9-Track Tape
Drive!  A fair
> trade-up, I'd say.
>
> So I've got it home and onto a table.   This may be
old-hat to some,
> but having never used a 9-track before I have to say
the air-powered
> self-threading mechanism is the coolest thing I've seen
all month.  I
> loaded a blank tape for the self-test, which passes. 
Now to get it to
> write some real data, and eventually use it to rescue
some old tapes
> I've had for years as well as the one I bought at VCF.
>
> I'm guessing that any modern *nix machine should
recognize it and be
> able to read it.  I planned on using a Sparc IPX or
something
> similarly portable when I get one formatted and loaded.
 In the
> meantime, I have my laptop.  Is there any chance of
getting WinXP to
> use this beast?  I have a SCSI PCMCIA card on the
laptop which I've
> used to read old hard drives, but drivers will be the
issue here.  I
> know in most cases the backup software needs to be able
to handle the
> drive as well as the OS - anyone tried to use Backup
Exec or any of
> the other big commercial s/w with one of these?
>
> Thanks in advance...
>   

On Dec 31, 2007 5:02 PM, Curt  Atari Museum <curtatarimuseum.com> wrote:
> Yes, BSD and Most Linux's see it.    Win 98 and NT
don't always like
> 9tracks for whatever reason, but XP works fine.      
dd works fine and
> you can install unix utils for XP and through a cmd
window run dd and
> access many tape contents.

Interesting...could Cygwin do the job?  I see AT&T has
"uwin" now too
(or maybe it's been around forever and I just discovered
it?)

Jason T wrote:

> I'm guessing that any modern *nix machine should
recognize it and be
> able to read it.  I planned on using a Sparc IPX or
something
> similarly portable when I get one formatted and loaded.
 In the
> meantime, I have my laptop.  Is there any chance of
getting WinXP to
> use this beast?  I have a SCSI PCMCIA card on the
laptop which I've
> used to read old hard drives, but drivers will be the
issue here.  I
> know in most cases the backup software needs to be able
to handle the
> drive as well as the OS - anyone tried to use Backup
Exec or any of
> the other big commercial s/w with one of these?

   Tivoli Storage Manager still supports 9-track, and I
think the IBM 
9-track SCSI drive is a close relative of yours.

   Failing that, if you have bootable Linux CD, it should
deal with the 
drive just fine.


	Doc

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007, Jason T wrote:

> I'm guessing that any modern *nix machine should
recognize it and be
> able to read it.  I planned on using a Sparc IPX or
something
> similarly portable when I get one formatted and loaded.
 In the
> meantime, I have my laptop.  Is there any chance of
getting WinXP to
> use this beast?  I have a SCSI PCMCIA card on the
laptop which I've
> used to read old hard drives, but drivers will be the
issue here.

    I have an IBM 9348-012, which is essentially the same
beast.  It works 
fine under Linux, with a PCMCIA SCSI card.


Mike Loewen				mloewencpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology	http://
sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/