karl@mstar.UUCP (Karl Fox) (01/14/88)
Since reading the uncomplimentary review of the 23Mb cartridge tape drive available for the UNIX-PC, I have been trying to find a way to make backups easier. Does anybody know if the floppy disk controller hardware (or software) can support floppy drives that can hold more than the vanilla 360Kb (more or less) drive that my 3B1 came with? If this has all been hashed out before, please reply via mail. -- Karl Fox, Morning Star Technologies, Inc. ...!cbosgd!mstar!karl
richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk) (01/16/88)
In article <696@mstar.UUCP> karl@mstar.UUCP (Karl Fox) writes: > Since reading the uncomplimentary review of the 23Mb cartridge tape > drive available for the UNIX-PC, I have been trying to find a way to > make backups easier. Does anybody know if the floppy disk controller > hardware (or software) can support floppy drives that can hold more > than the vanilla 360Kb (more or less) drive that my 3B1 came with? Some time back I saw some tape drives advertised for the ibm-pc that were supposed to plug into its floppy controller -- I think prices were less than $500. This seems like the best solution if it works, even if it's slow. Does anyone have any experiences or additional information to add about them? Thanks. -- Richard Foulk ...{dual,vortex,ihnp4}!islenet!richard Honolulu, Hawaii
richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk) (01/21/88)
> I bought a QIC-40 format 40 meg tape drive for my PC/AT compatible > machine. It has an electrical interface that is the same as a > standard 5-1/4" disk drive. From a local vendor, the tape drive > and PC driver software cost $350. The tape drive is made by a > company called Archive. The tapes are DC-2000 mini cassettes. I > found a place in Computer Shopper that sells the cassettes for $16.75. > All in all , it is a very effective backup medium. Sounds great! Do you have the model number of the drive? > It would be sort of neat to replace the floppy drive in a 3b1 with > a tape drive. The difficult part would be sriting the driver to > control the tape unit. It opens up a lot of possibilities, as > software could be distributed on tape. Any volunteers to write the > driver? It may not be all that difficult to write a driver. I vaguely remember that that drive was dealt with on a sector by sector basis just like a floppy -- which would make sense if it uses a floppy interface. So assuming the current floppy driver doesn't have too small a limit on the possible sector or track count then it may not be necessary to write a new driver at all! This also assumes that the tape drive addresses sectors and tracks in the usual sequential order, as I think the floppy driver does now. If these assumptions are correct then you may be able to use tar, cpio and friends with the existing driver. Don't forget the 3B1 floppy driver is configurable as to sector and track count via a text file (at least that's the way I remember it). I'll have to dig into my comp.sys.att archives to find the info again. At that price I'm real tempted to experiment a bit. I almost bought the tape drive from AT&T but it seemed like such a ripoff, and much too small. If anyone sees anything wrong or misguided about what I've said here please chime in and point it out. Thanks. -- Richard Foulk ...{dual,vortex,ihnp4}!islenet!richard Honolulu, Hawaii