Reading 9-track tapes in Linux

[Ethan Dicks]

On 7/3/05, Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote:
> I tell ya, I can understand that complicated shit will take time, but when
> something that should be easy gives me more grief than the most difficult
> things I've ever worked on, it makes you wonder.

Well... termination and cable issues aside, I don't have any obvious
things to recommend.  I know that in my case, I got a DEC TSZ07,
pulled out an Adaptec 1640 PCMCIA SCSI card, plugged it all together
and was instantly dumping tapes onto my RH9 laptop.

I think others have suggested some good things - test the SCSI chain
with a hard disk, then add the tape drive.  Perhaps try a different
external cable.  I've had those go bad on me every once in a long
while.

If you can get bits at all, it's no longer a pass/fail problem - it's
one of those harder-to-track down problems upon which some wierd
variable (phase of the moon, etc) is influencing.  Not talking at all
is much easier to solve.

SCSI voodoo... remember, it _used to_ be hard to get some things
working.  Tape drives never got the same attention as disk drives, and
it's less unexpected to fall into a pit trying something new.

-ethan