A590 and SCSI tape drive

orange · 13 January 2013, 15:33

I'd like to connect SCSI tape drive to A590. I've got the cable and adapter. Do I need to remove some termination inside A590? What software is used for tape drives?

mark_k · 13 January 2013, 21:25

You probably won't need to remove termination from inside the A590. You should use a terminator on the tape drive though. Depending on the drive it might have a switchable terminator built in, or you can plug a separate terminator into the 2nd SCSI port on the drive.

According to the A590 FAQ on Aminet you can use Quarterback (hard disk backup program) with tape drives.

There are several tape drive-related packages on Aminet. I think I used BTNTape to read my Amiga UNIX tape a few years ago. That's a tape handler which can be used by many programs, e.g. tar (archiver). Other tape handlers on Aminet: MWTape, tape-handler.

You could also hunt down a copy of TapeWorm-FS which was a commercial package by Moonlighter Software Development. I haven't used it, but it sounds quite interesting. It makes your tape drive act like a hard drive. An icon appears on Workbench and you can (I assume) drag icons to it to write them to tape. Pics of the packaging listing some features are here.

Out of interest, what type of tape drive do you have?

orange · 14 January 2013, 00:17

thanks Mark,
I think its 'Sun 8705DX'.
I'd like to use it for file transfer PC<->A500

mark_k · 14 January 2013, 22:40

For file transfer I'd use the tar archiver on both PC and Amiga, along with one of the tape handlers (e.g. BTNTape). But I'm not familiar enough with Windows to give much advice there. If you use Linux or similar it's quite simple though.

13 January 2013, 15:33	#1
orange Registered User Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Belgrade Posts: 567	A590 and SCSI tape drive I'd like to connect SCSI tape drive to A590. I've got the cable and adapter. Do I need to remove some termination inside A590? What software is used for tape drives?

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13 January 2013, 21:25	#2
mark_k Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Posts: 3,349	You probably won't need to remove termination from inside the A590. You should use a terminator on the tape drive though. Depending on the drive it might have a switchable terminator built in, or you can plug a separate terminator into the 2nd SCSI port on the drive. According to the A590 FAQ on Aminet you can use Quarterback (hard disk backup program) with tape drives. There are several tape drive-related packages on Aminet. I think I used BTNTape to read my Amiga UNIX tape a few years ago. That's a tape handler which can be used by many programs, e.g. tar (archiver). Other tape handlers on Aminet: MWTape, tape-handler. You could also hunt down a copy of TapeWorm-FS which was a commercial package by Moonlighter Software Development. I haven't used it, but it sounds quite interesting. It makes your tape drive act like a hard drive. An icon appears on Workbench and you can (I assume) drag icons to it to write them to tape. Pics of the packaging listing some features are here. Out of interest, what type of tape drive do you have?

14 January 2013, 00:17	#3
orange Registered User Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Belgrade Posts: 567	thanks Mark, I think its 'Sun 8705DX'. I'd like to use it for file transfer PC<->A500

14 January 2013, 22:40	#4
mark_k Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Posts: 3,349	For file transfer I'd use the tar archiver on both PC and Amiga, along with one of the tape handlers (e.g. BTNTape). But I'm not familiar enough with Windows to give much advice there. If you use Linux or similar it's quite simple though.

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