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From: kev@hpcpbla.HP.COM (Kevin Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: DAT tape drives...
Message-ID: <9850015@hpcpbla.HP.COM>
Date: 1 Mar 91 07:36:37 GMT
References: <1991Feb27.212123.1730@xn.ll.mit.edu>
Organization: HP Computer Peripherals Bristol, UK
Lines: 39

The obstacle to doing this would be the firmware running inside the
tape drive. This code expects to see the additional formatting
information that's built on top of the DAT audio format.
This formatting information is generated by the drive during writes,
and includes information such as record lengths and the location of
filemarks.

HP DAT drives expect to see this formatting information when they try
reading the tape. If they don't see it they will report errors back
up the SCSI bus.

> Is there any hardware reason why this would not be possible?

If drive firmware existed that supported reading "plain audio format"
then it would be possible to recover audio data from tape and return
it to a host via SCSI. Then you could start worrying about the drivers
in the host supporting it  :-)

HP has not produced any such firmware for its DAT drives.
I do not know if any other DAT drive vendors sport this featurism.

Regards,

Kevin Jones.


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Kevin Jones.                       | Hewlett Packard Ltd,
                                   | Computer Peripherals Bristol,
kev%hpcpbla@hplb.hpl.hp.com        | Filton Road,
                                   | Stoke Gifford,
Tel: 011 44 272 799910 (ext 22351) | Bristol.   BS12 6QZ.
                                   | ENGLAND.
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