From: "Brian Thurston" <brian_t...@rocketship.com>
Subject: Everex QIC tape drive
Date: 1997/06/23
Message-ID: <01bc7f72$cd9dc740$0100007f@bongo.integate.bc.ca>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 251904596
Organization: Internet Gateway Corporation
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.hardware


Hi:

I have an old Everex QIC 40/60 megabyte (uncompressed) tape drive system
that works well in Windows 95 (scheduled backup every Friday evening) that
backs up a compressed Windows 95 backup file (also scheduled) with a
conventional DOS 8.3 filename. This is required because it mutilates long
file names.

The drive is not recognized by any DOS or Windows backup programs (other
than the DOS program it came with) so that suggests it is not a
conventional QIC 40, 80, and 3010 tape drive like those made by the
following companies, and connected to the primary floppy disk controller:
Colorado Memory Systems, Conner, IOmega etc.

The Everex drive will not work with the Linux version of 'ftape' which only
works with the tape drives mentioned above. 

Everex went broke a few years ago but was bought and brought back to life.
They don't make the old tape drive anymore and don't support it other than
supplying equally ancient DOS and UNIX style drivers on their web site.

The old drivers I downloaded are called:

scoft210.z	for SCO UNIX System V/386 AT

xnxft210.z	for SCO Xenix 286/386

iscft210.z	for Interactive Unix 386/ix AT

esift210.z	for ESIX/V 386

Putting 'tar' into the names of the first three (like scoft210.tar.z)
reveals a directory structure with data files and even an installation 
help file when viewed with 'mc' in Linux or 'WinZIP' in Windows 95. The
last file 'esift210.z' is not deciferable except that a help file can be
found but scrolling through.

I have contacted the folks at Everex (the new people) and asked for their
source code since they were not supporting the product anymore and they
stated that it literally wasn't available (gone).

Has anybody had experience with this drive (was also sold under the name of
'Patriot')?

Has anybody successfully run the drive in Linux?

What are the chances of turning the files I have into something that will
work in Linux?

This is a 'Just For Fun' project, to see if it can be done without
re-inventing the wheel.

Can a source file be created from these files very easily? It would be nice
to be able to update the software to work with 80 meg tapes - just for fun.

The files are readily available at "http://www.everex.com/" if anybody
cares to have a look at them. Some of the files mentioned in their
directory are missing but the main files as described above are there and
aren't that big (~100 k each).

Any ideas?

Regards,

Brian.