[TUHS] Irwin 285

[Brantley Coile]

Those type of drives used a floppy interface but didn't look like a  
floppy. If I remember right, the seek signal was a data clock and the  
seek direction signal was the out data. I don't remember the in data.  
The other signals were ignored.

You sent command blocks to the tape drive by sending a series of seek  
requests that caused the command block to be encoded on the seek/seek  
direction pins. The you would toggle the seek pin and read the input  
pin to read the response.

Brantley.

iPhone email

On Jan 21, 2010, at 5:26 AM, Sergey Lapin <slapinid at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, all!
>
> Once, I was dismantling very old very long dead rusty box, which once
> ran some version of SCO UNIX.
> And I've got a strange device I've seen nowhere else - floppy-attached
> tape drive, labelled Irwin, model 285. Drive looks
> OK visually, motor wiring is perfect, so I can't see why it won't  
> work.
> I tried to make it run with old and new versions of Linux, but failed.
> Do anybody have any documentation
> regarding this?
>
> Also - how wide these devices were used? I've never met one before
> while I can't say I have little IT experience.
>
> All the best,
> S.
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