Date   : Sun, 02 Oct 2005 14:36:08 +0100
From   : "Ian Wolstenholme" <BBCMailingList@...>
Subject: Re: MDFS Tapes

I am trying to get an "authentic" tape system going, it looks as if
I have all the bits now and it is the only part of my MDFS system which
is missing.

I remembered earlier that my other MDFS also has a tape drive which
I hadn't tried so I gave it a go.  However this was the beginning of a 
disaster which began to unfold when the tape stopped autoloading
suddenly.  I ejected the tape to find that it was covered in 'orrible
brown goo like melted chocolate.  I thought at first that the drive had
melted the tape but the tape was intact, just covered in goo.

After a while spent rearranging the house so I could get at the drive
and take it to bits, I found that there was a thick coating of goo all
around the central winding mechanism.  I don't know what it is but
there is no drive belt in this drive so maybe it has disintegrated into
goo over the years.

Has anybody come across this before?

It's a shame because while the tape was winding it was able to print
some information and gave me a tape size reading of about 38MB which
is more than I got with the first drive.

Best wishes,


Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Blundell
To:  Ian Wolstenholme <BBCMailingList@...>
Cc:  bbc-micro@...
Sent: Sun, 02 Oct 2005 12:04:15 +0100
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] MDFS Tapes

On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 11:13 +0100, Ian Wolstenholme wrote:
> I have another tape drive which will fit the tapes but it has a 34-way
> connection like a 5.25" drive and not a SCSI connector.  Can this be
> converted for use with the MDFS?

Probably not, or at least not easily.  This sounds like a "floppy tape"
drive: i.e. a low-cost tape drive that connects to a floppy disk
controller and has virtually no onboard intelligence of its own.  These
were quite popular for a while in the early 1990s.

The MDFS needs a drive that responds to the SCSI direct-access command
set (i.e. the same as a hard disk).  Most SCSI tapes are
sequential-access devices and will not work.

Of course, it would be possible to construct an interface unit that
appeared to the MDFS as a direct-access device, and translated those
commands into the appropriate thing for any tape drive you cared to use.
But this would be a relatively complex device.

If you're just looking for a way to back up your MDFS, rather than an
authentic tape arrangement, it's possible that an extra hard disk
configured at ID 4 would look similar enough to a tape that the MDFS
would be happy with it.  Or, of course, you could back up your files
over the network, though I guess that might be unfeasibly slow.

p.