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Irwin External Tape Drive

H

Havoc

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2010
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114
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Southern California
First I want to say, I collect older PC's so when I run across rare unusual parts I buy them. I ran across a old Irwin SXe external tape drive with controller. The card show a part # of 3102002-C, the drive shows SXE-01 as a model #. I know nothing about this controller or tape drive. Any enlightenment would really be much appreciated.

Havoc
 
Added Pictures of elusive Tape Drive

Added Pictures of elusive Tape Drive

Havoc said:
First I want to say, I collect older PC's so when I run across rare unusual parts I buy them. I ran across a old Irwin SXe external tape drive with controller. The card show a part # of 3102002-C, the drive shows SXE-01 as a model #. I know nothing about this controller or tape drive. Any enlightenment would really be much appreciated.

Havoc
Click to expand...

I thought this may help, here our photo's of the Irwin SXe


20140304_095602.jpg20140304_095617.jpg20140304_095628.jpg20140304_095639.jpg
 
Hi, what tapes does it use? I used an Irwin tape system for backup for years, from memory it connected to the spare floppy port, DC100 tapes? It is around somewhere but not used for decades.
 
woodchips said:
Hi, what tapes does it use? I used an Irwin tape system for backup for years, from memory it connected to the spare floppy port, DC100 tapes? It is around somewhere but not used for decades.
Click to expand...

DC1000, actually--the minicartridges that work in a 3.5" form factor drive. The "SXE-01" is actually the name of the external box, not the drive it contains (most Irwin drives had a 3-digit model number where the first digit indicated the form factor, the second, the capacity, and the third the transfer speed.) I used a 225 (2 = 3.5" form factor, 2 = 20MB capacity, 5 = 500Kbps speed) for several years and found that when I went back to read the tapes over 20 years later, I could still read every single one successfully.

The card is made to get around the problem that 2 floppy drive systems were very common, so that there was no spare floppy slot with the standard PC AT floppy controller. The card (in addition to providing power for the drive) functioned as a "switch" to allow the drive to work with an already fully-floppy-populated system.

Almost all of Irwin's tape offerings were floppytape; they did make a couple of QIC-02 interface drives also.
 
I am a avid Vintage computer collector, I have my own group on Yahoo. So I am excited about anything I find that is unique. I took the external drive housing apart only to find the tape drive itself surrounded by metal shielding. Very well built. I don't want to take the drive apart any further then that if I can help it. On the back of the drive I do see a serial # (0002110) but it does not line up with the #'s you spoke about. However I did find on the inside top cover these #'s (506/2 . 001 maybe E or 8) and the date 8-02-91. I hope that helps. Do you have drivers for your Irwin, I would like to lock it into one of my computers just to see if it works.
 
Well I'm not having much luck with my vintage PC'c lately, I looked for EZTape drivers. I found some links that take me to driver Guide, which I wont use any more because of the mandatory file manager they want me to install. Also found another link that down loaded Driver Detective. Which I wont use, besides if I did the drivers I need are not on the machine I'm searching with. Is there a way I can get a link of your drivers?
 
Thank You, the notes are very helpful. I wonder what size my Irwin SXe-01 is. I guess I will have to run EZINFO to find out. Nothing on the container lets me know what size it is. Nothing on the net tells me what SXe-01 is. Nothing inside the container, other then the #'s I mentioned gives me any clue to what type tape I use for it. I'm just thankful I have the software now and can at least try to play with it.
 
For the range of Irwin tape drives that I worked with, the model number was at the rear of the drive itself.
An example is shown in one of the four photos at [here].
 
Yes, you are correct, DC1000 tapes, DC100 were for the HP9845 machines. Found the tapes but not the drive. Think mine was a 125 in a 5.1/4" format case?
 
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