Need help with *really* old tape drive...

[laserhawk64]

OK... first things first. This may be a bit of a doozy... since I'm asking a question about hardware that is old enough to make *me* groan in despair... and my first box had a 386 for the motor.

I've got in front of me a 250MB tape drive. It's a "Jumbo 250" by Colorado Memory Systems, model #DJ-20C. Date of manufacture is 15 Sept 1994.

From what I've already been able to find out, it was designed to go with an early, early, early PC clone (i.e. the original IBM PC or something *very* similar). Minimum system requirements were DOS 2.1 and 512 KB of RAM. Ack.

That said, I'd like to do a test of this thing. Seems there are precisely two on all of eBay, and both auctions are skyward of $80.

Kicker is that it uses a 34pin floppy cable and a controller card. I have floppy cables aplenty, but the controller card for this antique is long since gone. I'll explain why later, if anyone cares.

So, finally, to my question: would I be able to connect this ancient relic of a tape drive to a standard floppy controller card (if there is still such a thing) and be able to properly control the old tape drive? Or, rather, do I need the actual controller card to make the thing behave?

 

[dbarton]

As far as I recall the Jumbo 250 is QIC80 and it used the regular floppy controller. But now that I think more, maybe mine used the paralel port..

It's possible that it used a floppy controller, but you had an option of using the special controller cards which allowed faster read/writes.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

A quick Google shows the drive at Pacific Data for $50 You're going to need the specific controller board which uses the ISA interface.

 

[dbarton]

I just found this:

"Colorado DJ-20 tape drive is capable of storing up to 800MB on one tape while still being compatible with the most common QIC-40 and QIC-80 tapes. Drive can backup data at the speed of up to 9.3MB per minute. Tape drive operates directly from your PC's floppy controller without interfering with operations of your floppy disk drives. No confusing jumper settings or complicated installation procedures. Whole installation process should not take more than 10 minutes. Based on your PC's space availability you can choose to install the tape backup either into 5.25" or 3.5" inch drive bay. You can also purchase external version of the DJ-20 that works through parallel port with any IBM compatible PC (available in limited quantities). "

 

[laserhawk64]

@dbarton: THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

Off soon to the local computer shop to pick up a fdd controller card... not going to mess with a mobo to try and make this thing work... gotta have the card methinks.

Mods, this is one case closed. You are welcome to lock this thread whenever.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm staring at a Jumbo 250. It used the standard floppy disk controller. Mine has the special floppy extension cable they provided, which has connector near its end where the already-existing floppy cable was plugged it, allowing the connection of the Jumbo 250 without losing the ability to keep your floppy drive, too.

According to this Microsoft KB, Windows NT's NTBackup program supported the Jumbo 250, but with no compression option. I'm guessing (can't recall) that the built-in backup in Win95 or Win98 would also control the tape drive:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/104761

Note that the 250's native data capacity with QIC 80 tapes is 125 MB.

What looks like HP's DOS backup software for Jumbo 250:
http://h200003.www2.hp.com/bizsuppo...askId=135&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=63940

Edit:
Central Point Software's PCTools 5.x also had backup software that worked with the Jumbo 250. Now leave before I start crying about the demise of Central Point. Thanks, Symantec!!!!

 

[pitz]

@dbarton: THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

Off soon to the local computer shop to pick up a fdd controller card... not going to mess with a mobo to try and make this thing work... gotta have the card methinks.

Mods, this is one case closed. You are welcome to lock this thread whenever.

Good luck with that, but I doubt you're going to find a free-standing floppy controller card that works alongside your mobo's embedded floppy controller. Or even something that isn't ISA for that matter.

Bigger "problem" is probably going to be finding software that will actually facilitate your writing of the data to tapes.

 

[Emulex]

you guys never ran 3 floppy drive cable?

 

[Mark Nevill]

OK... first things first. This may be a bit of a doozy... since I'm asking a question about hardware that is old enough to make *me* groan in despair... and my first box had a 386 for the motor.

I've got in front of me a 250MB tape drive. It's a "Jumbo 250" by Colorado Memory Systems, model #DJ-20C. Date of manufacture is 15 Sept 1994.

From what I've already been able to find out, it was designed to go with an early, early, early PC clone (i.e. the original IBM PC or something *very* similar). Minimum system requirements were DOS 2.1 and 512 KB of RAM. Ack.

That said, I'd like to do a test of this thing. Seems there are precisely two on all of eBay, and both auctions are skyward of $80.

Kicker is that it uses a 34pin floppy cable and a controller card. I have floppy cables aplenty, but the controller card for this antique is long since gone. I'll explain why later, if anyone cares.

So, finally, to my question: would I be able to connect this ancient relic of a tape drive to a standard floppy controller card (if there is still such a thing) and be able to properly control the old tape drive? Or, rather, do I need the actual controller card to make the thing behave?

 

[Mark Nevill]

I have a Colorado Memory Systems 250MB magnetic tape from which I would like to recover some old Word and PDf files. I no longer have the drive. Does anyone know who I could send the tape to to get the files off it and send the to me?
Mark Nevill Fremantle Australia (Spam link removed)

 

[DrMrLordX]

I remember Colorado tape drives. I used to have an external one and used it for whole-system backups up through my k6-233 I think. It's probably around here somewhere . . . wonder if the tapes still work?

 

[bruceb]

Go to ebay ... eBay item number: 232192805789 ... about $30 plus $6 for shipping ... does HDD and Floppy Drive
NEW MAXTOR ISA Controller Card IDE & Floppy ADAPTER BOARD PN# 110-00417 16 Bit

 

[sdifox]

Go to ebay ... eBay item number: 232192805789 ... about $30 plus $6 for shipping ... does HDD and Floppy Drive
NEW MAXTOR ISA Controller Card IDE & Floppy ADAPTER BOARD PN# 110-00417 16 Bit

You might also want to pick up a computer with isa slot...

 

[Billb2]

Old. Slow. Small........

4,000 250 mb tapes to back up a 1 TB drive!

 

[mrwebber35]

This is an old thread but I have that Jumbo 250MB drive. Been trying to get it to work properly and thought I had it on a late 90's Dell with Win95 OS2 installed. Shows the drive in Device Manager with all the drivers for internal floppy, serial port etc. Pop in a tape and says it has a formatted tape but the drive can not read it so it goes into auto bulk erase, pre-format and format that takes all day. 50% mark takes under 2 hrs. I have 120MB, 250MB and 350MB tapes to try on this thing. The previous owner used an external bulk eraser. Travan tapes newer than this they say doing this ruins the tracks on the tapes making them bricks. Apparently these 250MB etc are OK to do that. Show the drive as QIC-80, I have tried a QIC-40 and QIC-80 tape but it keeps doing the same thing. Takes all day then either says there is a hardware error that it cannot recover from or the tape is unusable or it cannot read a header. I don't know if all my tapes are bad or the drive is out of alignment or the Dell can configure the floppy cable properly. Control manager says the Drive A:using MS-DOS compatibility mode file system. I had to unplug the actual 3.5 floppy drive as it was giving me the blue screen of death. Dell computers are neither OC friendly nor much else it seems. The floppy drive is uninstalled as well because even with the floppy unplugged enabling cause the blue screen of death.

Will only Ftape with a Unix system reformat the tape properly? I am using Arcada that says it's bulk erasing as the tape goes end to end in about a minute. Maybe I could rebuild a OC friendly P4 or a PII MB or a 486 or a 286 that I have stored for years?

Any advice out there from retired IT guys and <or> former owners of this technology?

Thank you in advance.
UPDATE:
Forgotten tech but I think I figured it out. Travan tapes 1-4 have factory tracks that say right on the new packaging [sometimes] not to degauss, meaning no bulk erasing allowed. If you lose the factory tracks you lose the tape. I bought them for a few dollars and the guy bulk erased several QIC-40/80 tapes and a few of the Travan tapes. I still haven't given up on the Travan refurbishing and I have been trying several different programs to correct the QIC tapes. I think I got it now. the QIC-40 120 MB tapes seem to work best to use the DOS Colorado program but seem to not recognize the 250MB or 350 MB tapes. I've managed to properly format the 120 MB tapes with that. I used the Colorado program made for Win95 version 1.6 to correct the 250 MB tapes while using Win98 1st Edition. Win95 2.5 I thought would be a winning OS but only the 120MB tapes seemed to work. Probably the broken recording switch fixed that. Will return to the OS soon to test that. Still haven't done the 350 tapes yet. The program does see the drive as 250/350 drive. I managed to break the little spindle that holds the record switch indicator but put it back with super glue before it completely snapped off.
Problem with the tapes you must address: if they are noisy they are getting too hot and don't allow for a smooth re-formatting or recording. You must carefully oil with sewing machine oil the internal little spindles and running surfaces without getting oil on anything else. Corrected a tape that had the error code that the tape was not recording. Tried several times so I know the oil did the trick. That fixed a tape that I though ate the tape. They run so tight that the wrinkles go away. Will need to test if there is data loss. Will update as time goes by.
Retirement suits me. My old boss would and has said I have too much time on my hands to do this diddly stuff. Those people are nothing but bad memories for me now. FREEDOM!
Oh one more thing. I was using WinXP to do this before and the tapes took 8 hrs. to fail??? Now I used DOS Win95C/98A and it does it successfully in 1 hr. flat 120MB or 250MB tapes. Drivers must be a mess even when using compatibility? Need to look at that more. Think I found a way to use my i7 Win10 for this.
If anyone is interested I did a 100% backup for Win95C with USB drivers on a QIC-40 120 MB tape with plenty of room to spare.