A nine track drive would certainly not work with an ACARD adapter- they are "intelligent" designed for mass storage. And on top of that the only adapters I know of go the wrong way (IDE devices on a SCSI bus), though I haven't researched the reverse.
I gave Josh Dersch a Xircom USB to SCSI not so long ago and we had no issue getting it to talk to an HP SCSI 9-track tape drive and even streaming music off of it. Linux handles both devices fine- plug and play. I have a Microtech USB to SCSI and it worked similarly although my 9-track streamer is sort of screwed. There's not even a project here. Connect the cables and try it, or forever hold your postulation... ;) Sent from my iPhone On Oct 16, 2015, at 08:05, et...@757.org wrote: >> Horrific hijacking topic-drift but I remember your name from a recent >> google... ages ago you were trying to get an IBM 9348 9-track working >> with a USB to SCSI converter... did you succeed? What did you use? I'm >> in exactly the same position! >> Thanks >> Mike > > *AWESOME* You just reminded me of a project I need to get back to. Yea I was > planning to use it as media storage for car audio (storing music on 9 track > tape.) > > I have the drive still. I managed to get a SE to DIFF converter board and > boxes. IIRC I bought one, then ended up with more from a SGI computer haul. > The tape drive has a board internally that comes in both a SE and DIFF > version, but the SE board was way more than the cost of a converter which > should just be some simple logic chips or op amps or whatever. > > I bought some tapes from eBay for the project, have those nearby. > > The USB to SCSI adapter I had -- I think the trick to it is it could only > handle 1 device, and the SCSI ID had to be 0 or 1. I still haven't but > haven't used it. > > These days, if I revist the project, I'd probably go with an ACARD or modern > similar device that does IDE To SCSI bridging. > > I have no idea how tape drives work, and how those little bridge gadgets > handle forwarding SCSI CDB and other data. Are they only meant for hard > drives? Could NetBSD unix tape commands work with the drive? Not really sure. > > The drive is in Norfolk in storage. > > So I got all the parts, then never got around to making it go. One thing was > all the cables needed since it was like 68 to 68 then 68 to 50 then 50 to 25 > to use the USB thing. I never settled on the playback board, now there are > way more options! > > At one point I even had permission from the 80s band Information Society to > use there song "Where would we be without IBM" in a video of the whole thing. > Hmp. > > > > -- > Ethan O'Toole >
