Small DEC QBUS backplane

Chris Zach cz at alembic.crystel.com
Sun Jan 31 11:12:34 CST 2021


Interesting. I have a Contemporary Cybernetics 8505 drive that I think 
used the Exabyte tape system, will have to dig it out and see what it 
looks like. Used them at the IEEE Computer Society for years but finally 
went with IBM LTO tape libraries at Science. The LTOs were more reliable.

C

On 1/30/2021 9:25 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
> On 01/30/2021 07:41 PM, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
>> btw, I found an Exabyte 8200 in a pile of stuff I bought at VCF East
>> last year (but one :-) )  Does anybody on the list have experience
>> getting this to work on a Dilog SQ703 under NetBSD?
>>
>>
> Exabytes are pretty classic SCSi tape drives.  They come in single-ended 
> and differential configurations, you need to check which you have.
> 
> The downside is they have a short working life.  Back in the day, there 
> were outfits that would
> rebuild them at an affordable price, I think they cannibalized video 
> drives for parts.
> I don't know what failed on them, but it seemed that whatever it was 
> would fail even if powered-off and sitting on the shelf.
> 
> You should have no trouble running them on anything that handles SCSI 
> tape drives.
> 
> Jon


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