quite old streamer Iomega Tape 350

[Daniel Neugebauer]

Hi!

Today a colleague gave me an old streamer (connected via floppy cable).
According to what is written on its front side it has to be a "Iomega
Tape 350". As I feared it is so old I can't seem to find any working
drivers/applications for it. It should work with Linux's ftape-modules
but a first try hasn't got it working for me.

Since he could find neither the manual nor any software for it (I could
bet it's included with one of the old backups he gave me ) I just sit
here and don't even know if I have set it up properly: There are (pins
for) jumpers but without any hint on what they may do. I don't even know
how to put the cable correctly ("nose" up or down? it both gives me the
exact same results). As expected, Windows XP Pro SP2 (I know I may not
even be able to get *any* original driver for this device to run here)
doesn't recognize the streamer. However it doesn't even seem to try: I
am left with my (disconnected) floppy drive but if you would think there
may be any activity on the device when I hit A: you're wrong.


Do you know of any driver/software that I *may* be able to use (forget
that I have Win XP installed) or do you know where to get any
information about the drive's configuration? (Google doesn't count -
guess what I already tried )

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

[This followup was posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage and a copy
was sent to the cited author.]

Today a colleague gave me an old streamer (connected via floppy cable).
According to what is written on its front side it has to be a "Iomega
Tape 350". As I feared it is so old I can't seem to find any working
drivers/applications for it. It should work with Linux's ftape-modules
but a first try hasn't got it working for me.

Since he could find neither the manual nor any software for it (I could
bet it's included with one of the old backups he gave me ) I just sit
here and don't even know if I have set it up properly: There are (pins
for) jumpers but without any hint on what they may do. I don't even know
how to put the cable correctly ("nose" up or down? it both gives me the
exact same results). As expected, Windows XP Pro SP2 (I know I may not
even be able to get *any* original driver for this device to run here)
doesn't recognize the streamer. However it doesn't even seem to try: I
am left with my (disconnected) floppy drive but if you would think there
may be any activity on the device when I hit A: you're wrong.


Do you know of any driver/software that I *may* be able to use (forget
that I have Win XP installed) or do you know where to get any
information about the drive's configuration? (Google doesn't count -
guess what I already tried )

It's probably QIC-80 related. It's actually around 170M uncompressed
with special extra-long tapes. Pretty useless these days. They often
used a '3rd' floppy setting, with a special cable. It's possible some
newer computers don't support more than 1 floppy these days.

There may still be older software that might work with DOS or
Win9x/ME. In fact, the backup software that came with Win98 may work, as
it supported some floppy-based tape drives. It was a cut-down version of
Aracada Backup/Seagate Backup/Veritas Backup Exec Desktop.

NT support is remotely possible, and it MIGHT work with 2K/XP.

You can try to look for old versions of Aracada Backup, Seagate Backup,
and Veritas Backup Exec Desktop. The latest Stomp Backup MyPC does NOT
support it.