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How to set up a Wangtek Tape Drive and a few other things.

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DOS lives on!!

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My Dell System 310 had a bunch of bad sectors on the hard drive, so I reformatted it. Unfortunately, I lost all of the drivers for some of the devices that I had wanted to use. I'd appreciate it if anybody could help me find the drivers for the following devices,

1. Wangtek 5150 EQ tape drive with it's SCSI controller card.
2. Linksys Ether16 LAN Card.
3. A (weird name) Guts GS-IF card. On one of the chips, it says GA1901A. I'm assuming it's a keyboard card.

Also, did Dell have a specific version of DOS to use with it's PCs or did it just use the regular MS-DOS?
 
Do NOT connect a SCSI card to the Wangtek 5150 drive! It's not SCSI, but QIC-36. The Wangtek controller, IIRC, is a full-length card.

That being said, do you remember which backup package that you used? I have SyTOS here, which supports the drive, but if it's not what you used in backup, it's not going to work. You can also try building the QIC02 driver into NetBSD and see if you can get it going that way. The Linksys card should have drivers over at Driverguide.com.

Don't know about the Guts card, though.
 
Well, I don't really know if it was a SCSI card, but when I got the computer, the tape drive was plugged into it. I did, however, get a few backup tapes from that computer when they backed it up in the early 90's. I was hoping to get the tape drive to work first so I could get the drivers off that.

I really don't know what was going through someones head when they decided to name a card, "Guts." Well, I guess it's part of the "guts" of a computer.
 
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I can pass a copy of SyTOS to you; at least it'll spin the drive, though it may not get you anything if the tape was made with a different backup package.

I don't know if Dell included any software on its boot disks for the drive, or if that was an add-on.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I can pass a copy of SyTOS to you; at least it'll spin the drive, though it may not get you anything if the tape was made with a different backup package.

I don't know if Dell included any software on its boot disks for the drive, or if that was an add-on.
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If you can get SyTOS to me, I'll try it out. I think the tape drive was added on later, but I'll see if the diagnostic disk can pick anything up.
 
Whenever I insert a tape into the WangTek drive, it makes a grinding sound, like a motor is trying to spin, but it can't and nothing spins. I took the rubber band off and that still didn't make a difference. Suggestions??
 
Instead of the main motor, the sound is coming from some motor looking thing on the back of the read/write head. I don't know if it's a real problem or if its just something it does whenever a tape is inserted.
 
It should b doing it--it's sort of the equivalent of a drive recalibrate. The object in question is a stepper motor that displaces the heads a bit every time the tape reverses direction (serpentine recording). The nose should stop after a few seconds. Most drives also spin the tape some to find the BOT marker.
 
Takes a dedicated package. Didn't I send a PM to you with a link to a copy of SyTOS?

These units are streamers--meant to be fed a constant stream of data. "Bubbles" cause the tape to stop, reverse direction for a foot or two and then gets back up to speed, reading blocks until it finds the point where it left off, then switches on the write current again.
 
I got SyTOS. I was just wondering if I needed any drivers to get the computer to recognize it by typing, say D: . Just for general read/write data usage.
 
DOS lives on!! said:
I got SyTOS. I was just wondering if I needed any drivers to get the computer to recognize it by typing, say D: . Just for general read/write data usage.
Click to expand...

Generally speaking, that's not how you use them. Usually used for backup. For SyTOS, configure iwth the stconfig utility.

NetBSD used to have a QIC02 driver to map these things like standard tape drives, which should work with your rig. You should also read the man documentation for mt.

I don't know if Linux or FreeBSD still has working QIC02 drivers. I suspect that Xenix may be crufty enough to have them.
 
I think it used to be a server and I have several backups from it. I guess I'm looking for a driver for the QIC WangTek controller card rather than for the tape drive itself.
 
Do you have a pic of the card? I have an EVEREX tape drive bundle, it has a wangtek drive and controller. I have the manual, and disks for it.

When I get home, I can compare the controllers, and see if its the same type as mine.
 
Ah, crap! I misread your model number and my brain froze.

You do have the SCSI version. Find a decent SCSI controller and Windows NT/2K should know about it, at least in the Windows Backup context. You should be able to get about 150MB on a DC6150 cart.

Sorry, I had QIC36 on the brain.
 
Yup SCSI--uses the same TI chip that the Seagate ST-01 controller uses.

Since SCSI commands are standardized, any single-ended SCSI controller should work.
 
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