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Tape Backup 40SC
Posted by: mousehouse on 2024-04-23 11:10:07 Recently bought a Mac Classic that turned out to be seriously rotting inside. With help of an awesome Mac hero got it working again… But it came with an external HD who was originally a tape drive. It now has a full height 3.5 drive installed that I still need to test. Does anybody know what tape drive was used by Apple? I might want to restore it to original state.
Posted by: mousehouse on 2024-04-23 11:11:12
Posted by: mousehouse on 2024-04-23 11:41:01 Drive is working. Funny enough the drive icon is an image of the unit with a tape in front. Wow… where does it get that from… It’s a 20MB drive, I think a Connor. Still works like a charm after rusting away for two decades in storage.
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2024-04-23 12:35:27 Funny enough the drive icon is an image of the unit with a tape in front. Wow… where does it get that from… The icon is provided by the driver: devices can have basically any icon they like.
Posted by: LaPorta on 2024-04-23 13:34:43 Did they only use 40 MB tapes? One would assume that from the "40 SC" bit. Odd, though.
Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2024-04-23 14:29:13 The drive takes DC2000 QIC tapes and uses a 3M mech. The biggest issue with these if I recall is that the pinch roller turns to goo and/or whatever tapes you find tend to have tension band problems.
Posted by: mousehouse on 2024-04-23 23:40:03 I have a few other tape drives and sure thing, they are challenging. I’ll Google a bit more for the tape drive model. Impressed with the mega noisy drive still running 😄
Posted by: olePigeon on 2024-04-26 08:18:15 Did they only use 40 MB tapes? One would assume that from the "40 SC" bit. Odd, though. Probably 20 MB / 40 MB compressed. That's an old trick by tape manufacturers that's still around today. There might be a STAC chip in there to do real-time compression.
Posted by: mousehouse on 2024-04-27 04:56:06 I’ve browsed about a million tape drive ads on EBay but am not able to find any 20 / 40 QIC drives. If somebody knows the exact type used by Apple please share!
Posted by: olePigeon on 2024-05-01 08:54:11 @mousehouse NJRoadFan says they use 40MB cartridges. Here're some cheap 40MB tape cartridges.
Posted by: mousehouse on 2024-05-01 10:30:35 @mousehouse NJRoadFan says they use 40MB cartridges. Here're some cheap 40MB tape cartridges. Nice! Yes found those as well. Just can’t find a drive that takes them…
Posted by: olePigeon on 2024-05-01 14:28:18 Oh, right. I missed the part about how it had a HDD and not the tape drive.
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