From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:19:17 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Irwin 285 In-Reply-To: <48239d391001210226v7bc5208apf497cc74b54f5d4b@mail.gmail.com> References: <48239d391001210226v7bc5208apf497cc74b54f5d4b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20100121121917.eb90e950.jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:26:39 +0300 Sergey Lapin wrote: > And I've got a strange device I've seen nowhere else - floppy-attached > tape drive, labelled Irwin, model 285. [...] > Also - how wide these devices were used? I've never met one before > while I can't say I have little IT experience. Floppy tapes where quite common consumer grade (i.e. cheap crap) backup drives in the early 90'is. They just mimic a floppy drive to the controler. But you need special software to actually use the drive. They don't work like a big floppy. Don't waste your time with this crap. Floppy streamers are sslllooowww and unreliable. They are limited to the data rate of a floppy drive, IIRC 500 kBit/s max. and the tapes need to be formated before use. They have no "read after write" verify. So you need an extra verify run after the backup was written. I.e. you need to run the whole tape three times through the drive. This can take up to several hours. The only reason to resurrect one of these drives is to read old tapes with important data that would be lost otherwise. -- tschüß, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ _______________________________________________ TUHS mailing list TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs