Advice needed on Colorado Tape drive.
Jane Wang
Gateway 2000 486/33ISA pc. Right now I have two floppy drives in the system,
and the control card can only control two floppy disks. Somebody told me that
I can connect a Colorado 120mb internal tape drive onto the floppy cable
without an extra controller for it. So I checked the cable. There
are two plugs from the cable already plugged into the floppy drives, and
there are two unused plugs on the cable. But it seems like that the plugs
can only accept pins, not the edge of a printed circuit board. So am I missing
something here? Or does the Colorado tape drive also come with pin plug?
Do anyone out there have any good or bad experience with Colorado drive?
Any advice is deeply appreciated.
Tong Gao
tg...@cad.cs.uiuc.edu
Kalle T. Tuulos
>I can connect a Colorado 120mb internal tape drive onto the floppy cable
>without an extra controller for it. So I checked the cable. There
I've been using a Colorado 120mb drive for half year, first in 386/25
machine and then in 486/50. I have 2 floppy drives already, and the tape
drive connects parallel to them. If you know anything about signals on
the cable, you can simply buy a card-edge connector which suits on
Colorado tape drive and push it onto your floppy cable. The connector
costs about $2 . But if you don't know exactly what to do, please ask
for futher advice.
However, if you're going to use that tape drive heavy, don't buy Colorado.
It seems to be quite old-fashioned with it's technics and I don't believe
it will last long in heavy use. (I can't explain why, my vocabulary is not
big enough...)
>Tong Gao
>tg...@cad.cs.uiuc.edu
--
Kalle T. Tuulos katu...@utu.fi
Michael Maston
I was in the same basic situation you are talking about (both floppy
connectors used and only 2 supported by HD/FD interface). I bought the
Colorado Jumbo 120 and figured I would just live without one of my
floppy drives when i needed the tape drive. I found out, however, that
the tape drive comes with a cable that connect to your FD interface and
then connect to your existing FD cable. Of course, this provided cable also
has one more connector on it that goes to the tape unit itself. The tape
drive does not take the place of a floppy drive at all and therefore all
three devices are available at all times. They must bypass the firmware
that controls the floppies and directly manipulate the tape drive hardware
to achieve this. Of course there is nothing (!) on the box that would let
you know this ahead of time! I assume that most (if not all) other floppy
interface controlled tape units do the same thing.
As for the unit itself, so far I am very satisfied. It was easy to install
and the backup software is complete, but straightforward to use. I did
try using it under a DOS window in OS/2 2.0 just for kicks. As expected,
since it is doing some tricks by manipulating the hardware, this doesn't
work well....it tries, but it gets lost and tries to talk to the floppy drives
after a while. Under DOS (using 5.0) it is rock-solid though. All in all,
a good product!
Good luck!
Michael Maston
GTE Government Systems
Ken Germann
A CK-38 Tape drive kit from Colorado should clear up the problem.
Ken
Bill Dixon
mma...@netcom.com (Michael Maston) writes:
>
>
>I was in the same basic situation you are talking about (both floppy
>connectors used and only 2 supported by HD/FD interface). I bought the
>Colorado Jumbo 120 and figured I would just live without one of my
>floppy drives when i needed the tape drive. I found out, however, that
>the tape drive comes with a cable that connect to your FD interface and
>then connect to your existing FD cable. Of course, this provided cable also
>has one more connector on it that goes to the tape unit itself. The tape
>drive does not take the place of a floppy drive at all and therefore all
>three devices are available at all times. They must bypass the firmware
>that controls the floppies and directly manipulate the tape drive hardware
>to achieve this. Of course there is nothing (!) on the box that would let
>you know this ahead of time! I assume that most (if not all) other floppy
>interface controlled tape units do the same thing.
the floppy connections worked. Thanks for clearing this up. One further
question, though: does this procedure degrade the performance of the
floppy drives in any noticeable way?
- - - -
William J. Dixon
Dept. of Political Science Phone: (602) 621-7600
University of Arizona Bitnet: DIXONW AT ARIZVM1
Tucson, Arizona 85721 Internet: dix...@arizvm1.ccit.arizona.edu
Charles Marshall
: However, if you're going to use that tape drive heavy, don't buy Colorado.
: It seems to be quite old-fashioned with it's technics and I don't believe
: it will last long in heavy use. (I can't explain why, my vocabulary is not
: big enough...)
As for heavy usage: I've been using a CMS tape drive 5 days a week, at
least 1 hour a day for the last 11 months without any problems. It's not
the fastest system, nor the biggest. But for the price, it's great.
Charles
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Marshall Bitnet: cjma...@flint.mines.colorado.edu
Information Services Usenet: cjma...@slate.mines.colorado.edu
Colorado School of Mines
Erik Swimm
On the subject of tape drives, I just acquired a Colorado Memory Systems
tape drive, but have no software for it, nor a way to determine the tape size.
I have the drive, and controller card. The card has the connections marked
'from floppy controller', 'to floppy drives', 'to tape drive', and a 37 pin
D-type connector on side. It all seems pretty straight forward, execpt for
the 37 pin D connector. I can't find any markings on the drive, saying what
size tapes it takes, all I can find is the serial number and rev, which are
S/N 0091224L and FW REV: 36. I don't know if you can tell the size from that,
but that's all I've got. Also, does anyone know where I might be able to
purchase tapes for it, as I didn't get one with the drive.
Thanks in advance.
-Erik A. Swimm
Paul Penrod
>
> I, too, am considering purchase of a tape drive and had wondered how
>the floppy connections worked. Thanks for clearing this up. One further
>question, though: does this procedure degrade the performance of the
>floppy drives in any noticeable way?
>- - - -
> William J. Dixon
> Dept. of Political Science Phone: (602) 621-7600
> University of Arizona Bitnet: DIXONW AT ARIZVM1
> Tucson, Arizona 85721 Internet: dix...@arizvm1.ccit.arizona.edu
No, it does not. I have used one for 2 months and it works without
interferance to my floppies on the Adaptec 1542B controller. The
only thing to remember on the Adaptec is to cut the bus timing back
to 2 usec, when using the tape drive, so it cuts back on the number
of resets to the drive. I can stream about 5 megs/min without the
supporting hardware card on a 486/33 machine, with resets at 2 to 4
meg intervals.
...Paul
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Bureaucracy: noun, plural - Bureaucracies.
The process of turning energy into solid waste.
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Kalle T. Tuulos
>As for heavy usage: I've been using a CMS tape drive 5 days a week, at
>least 1 hour a day for the last 11 months without any problems. It's not
>the fastest system, nor the biggest. But for the price, it's great.
When I inspected my Colorado tape drive, I had used it for approx. 10 hours:
two 60MB tapes formatted, one full backup, couple of incremental
backups, couple of restores. The read/write-head was quite scratchy so that
the mirror-like surface was away and the next, brass-like-colored layer was
visible. I use 3M 's tapes. The switch used in tape drive is the same type
like used in old joysticks (kalvokytkin in finnish) and the frame is made
of plastic instead of metal. And last, the drive heats very much, so when
I had formatted my 60MB tape, the aluminium (I believe) underplate of the
tape carbridge was so hot it was not pleasure to touch it.
BUT however, I have got no problems using my tape drive.
>Charles
forrest.e.gehrke
>
> I, too, am considering purchase of a tape drive and had wondered how
>the floppy connections worked. Thanks for clearing this up. One further
>question, though: does this procedure degrade the performance of the
>floppy drives in any noticeable way?
>- - - -
Only if you attempt to tape a floppy diskette; then its slower than
taping a hard drive. But why would anyone want to do this?
Forrest Gehrke f...@dodger.att.com
forrest.e.gehrke
>katu...@polaris.utu.fi (Kalle T. Tuulos) writes:
>
>As for heavy usage: I've been using a CMS tape drive 5 days a week, at
>least 1 hour a day for the last 11 months without any problems. It's not
>the fastest system, nor the biggest. But for the price, it's great.
>
My Jumbo250 failed totally at 15 months. "Tape drive error 99 0b".
Although the manual says this requires reformatting the tape,
which made no difference whatsoever, a call to CMS brought an
immediate "Your drive has failed".
For $105 CMS will fix it. Since they are so prepared, I have
a suspicion that short life is a problem.
Forrest Gehrke f...@dodger.att.com
Glen Midkiff
$ In article <1992Jul24.2...@m.cs.uiuc.edu$ jw...@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Jane Wang) writes:
$$Hello, I am looking for a reliable yet not expensive tape drive for my
$$Gateway 2000 486/33ISA pc. Right now I have two floppy drives in the system,
$$and the control card can only control two floppy disks. Somebody told me that
$$I can connect a Colorado 120mb internal tape drive onto the floppy cable
$$without an extra controller for it. So I checked the cable. There
$$are two plugs from the cable already plugged into the floppy drives, and
$$there are two unused plugs on the cable. But it seems like that the plugs
$$can only accept pins, not the edge of a printed circuit board. So am I missing
$$something here? Or does the Colorado tape drive also come with pin plug?
$$Do anyone out there have any good or bad experience with Colorado drive?
$$Any advice is deeply appreciated.
$
$ A CK-38 Tape drive kit from Colorado should clear up the problem.
The Colorado Jumbo 120 and 250 now comes with the cable you need at
no extra cost. The cable runs from the tape to the floppy controller
and has a connector that your floppy cable plugs into.
--
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Glen Midkiff (gmid...@dsac.dla.mil) |
|Phone: (614)-692-9643 @DLA, Systems Automation Center, Columbus, Oh. |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
Michael Maston
>
> I, too, am considering purchase of a tape drive and had wondered how
>the floppy connections worked. Thanks for clearing this up. One further
>question, though: does this procedure degrade the performance of the
>floppy drives in any noticeable way?
>- - - -
Yes, not very clear even to myself who has been using/programming PC's for
a LONG time. I recommended that they point this info out on the package
somewhere on my registration card. Whether they actually do it...
Anyway, as to your other question, while I don't have much call to use the
floppies very much, I have noticed no degradation in performance or
reliability of the floppy drives since the tape drive install.
Michael Maston
GTE Government Systems
Mt. View, CA 94043
Dave Medin
|> katu...@polaris.utu.fi (Kalle T. Tuulos) writes:
|> : However, if you're going to use that tape drive heavy, don't buy Colorado.
|> : It seems to be quite old-fashioned with it's technics and I don't believe
|> : it will last long in heavy use. (I can't explain why, my vocabulary is not
|> : big enough...)
|> :
|>
|> As for heavy usage: I've been using a CMS tape drive 5 days a week, at
|> least 1 hour a day for the last 11 months without any problems. It's not
|> the fastest system, nor the biggest. But for the price, it's great.
I've had very few problems with either my Colorado DJ-10 or DJ-20.
Let me put a plug in for their customer support, though. The drive
comes with lifetime 1-800 tech support. They also have a BBS for
downloading the latest drivers. When I called with a problem, I was
asked what driver version I had. When it turned out not to be the latest,
the rep told me I could download the new driver, but that he'd send
me the disk anyway at no charge! Sure enough, I got a disk as well,
UPS BLUE LABEL, without even asking for it.
The only problem I've had with my DJ-20 is that I have to select
"N" for simultaneous disk/tape access in the software setup
menu or I cannot get past the 20 megabyte point. I don't exactly
know what I'm losing, and the rep didn't either beyond the fact that
it eliminated the kind of typical problem I was reporting.
I found that selecting software compression (time-optimized) tends
to bring out the worst in the tapes I use (3M). I've had several
non-recoverable errors in volumes where I used compression, where I
had none in non-compressed volumes. It figures...
--
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Dave Medin Phone: (205) 730-3169 (w)
Intergraph Corp. (205) 837-1174 (h)
M/S GD3004
Huntsville, AL 35894 Internet: me...@catbyte.b30.ingr.com
UUCP: ...uunet!ingr!b30!catbyte!medin
******* Everywhere You Look (at least around my office) *******
* The opinions expressed here are mine (or those of my machine)
Kalle T. Tuulos
When tape is inserted and I'll try to read floppy drive, it does not work.
>Michael Maston
>GTE Government Systems
>Mt. View, CA 94043
Kalle T. Tuulos
Pirttil{hteenkatu 37
20320 Turku, Finland