Reading 9-track tapes in Linux

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Sat, 2 Jul 2005, Patrick Finnegan wrote:

> Curt @ Atari Museum declared on Saturday 02 July 2005 10:31 pm:
> > Sallem,
> >
> >     What kind of backups are they?     Are they perhaps BSD Linux
> > using the level0 backup method?   What version of Linux are you
> > currently running to do tape backup/restores?  If it is a level0 (I'm
> > rusting, so someone correct me if I'm mistaken)
>
> Uhm, I really doubt that Sellam is trying to do backups from his Linux
> system to 9-track tapes...  I'm sure that he's trying to read tapes
> written on something else (like maybe a PDP11 or something) on the Linux
> box.

Correct.

> Sellam, are you sure that your tape drive works, and that the SCSI chain
> is properly terminated?  An unterminated SCSI chain may be good enough
> to pass forward/rewind commands, but have problems with data transfers
> long enough to pass data to/from the tape.

The tape drive was known to be working (I borrowed it from a Howard Harte
who used it previously to read some tapes for me).

However, the termination is something that I've been concerned with.
Howard used it with a short (~3ft) SCSI cable.  I'm using it with a longer
(~6ft) cable.  The tape drive has two 50-pin IDC connectors on the back.
There's a ribbon cable coming out of one of the connectors with two
amphenol connectors on the end.  One amphenol connector is terminated, and
the other is connected to my SCSI cable, which is then connected to my
SCSI interface on the PC.  The other 50-pin IDC connector is just open.  I
mentioned to Howard that this didn't look right but he said it always
worked for him.

I have (or at least I think I have) a terminator that will plug into a
50-pin IDC type connector, but I can't find it.  I'm hoping that fixing
this cabling mess will solve the problem.

> If the SCSI chain is intact and terminated properly (you could stick
> another device, maybe a SCSI HDD, on the chain to test that), then i'd
> suspect the drive as being bad.

Hmm, good idea.  I hadn't thought to extend the chain to something that I
can reliably terminate.

I'll try again, though at this point I'd rather be shot in the head.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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