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Any interest in a standalone controller for QIC-02 interface drives?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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I've got a few old Tandberg QIC-02 interface drives (DC600XL/DC6150 carts, probably). They're good sturdy drives, but nowadays for that work, I use SCSI drives, so they haven't seen any action in quite some time. The interface is pretty simple, but all of the PC adapters you're likely to run into are ISA (e.g. I have a couple of Alliance Technology cards--the predecessor to ATI).
I was thinking that a MCU interface would be pretty easy--data written to microSD card. Any interest at all in such a beast?
Please note that I'm not talking about the similar, but very different QIC-36 interface units.
 
A few years ago, I had started to build a QIC-02 to USB adapter, using an Arduino Pro Micro (Atmega32U4).
Unfortunately, the drive I used (Maynard 60CS) always reported an error, so I eventually gave up. Still have the parts.

But I don't quite get your idea. Do you want the MCU to simulate a QIC-02 tape drive, or to run one?
 
To run one--pretty simple. Alternatively, to run a QIC-36 drive--a bit more complex.

It really doesn't matter what people say--if I need one, I'll just do the design for myself. :).
 
Al Kossow said:
does QIC-02 return buffer data even if it is bad? THAT would be useful.
Click to expand...
According to the QIC-02 standard, it does return data (see PDF page 66) in case of error; an exception status is set in that case.
I've got several Tandberg TDC-3650 drives, which are the last Tandbergs to handle QIC-11. It's the reason I asked about doing an interface. The QIC-02 interface itself is pretty simple.
 
My standard go-to for this sort of stuff--stm32f407 on an STM32F4VET6 project board (usb, microSD and lots of 5V tolerant I/O). Running the driver GPIOs in open-drain mode. 192K of memory and 168MHz is more than enough for this sort of thing--I bought a pile of the boards through AliExpress; they cost me about $15 each. I've mounted one on a prototype board (standoffs), the same way I did for my floppy controller and my HP tape controller. Development library is libopencm3.
 
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Finally got "around tuit" and scribbled some code for the project. Right now, only simple read, space, init and rewind functions. Output from a read is a tar-type image (i.e. byte stream) to microSD card.
Code is somewhat unpolished, but what the heck, why not try it? I grabbed a tape out of my big box o' tapes and stuck it in the old Tandberg drive. Much to my surprise, not only did the tape read, but it read without any shoeshining, so my SD write routines are keeping up.

So what was on the tape? Linux 1.0, all 11MB of it, including source. My, how things have gotten bigger since 1995...
 

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