[Info-vax] DAT drive misreads write protect tab

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2012-10-09 21:50:38 +0000, Rich Jordan said:

> ...This is a home hobby site with zero budget and I'm just trying to help
> them out.  Thanks for any info.  Suggestions to replace hardware would
> not be helpful at the moment (though down the road they hope to
> inherit a DLT IV drive and tapes).  They just need to keep their
> backups going for now...

IIRC, it was a mechanical switch#, but if they can't figure that detail 
out for themselves, then they're probably not ready to repair the drive 
themselves.  Put another way, the answer to the question they've asked 
just leads to another and probably more expensive question, and they're 
probably not ready to answer that one without additional assistance.

In general, they will want to make cartage-level acquaintance with a 
local DEC/Compaq/HP site that's retiring old hardware, or with surplus 
vendors, or both.

Alternatively and TMMV, from the catalogs of currently-available 
replacement hardware and hardware alternatives:
DDS-3 drive US$10*;
DLT-IV-class drive ~$25* and DLT-IV media ~$5-10* each;
Disk-based backups; $varies (tape is mostly-dead; didn't you get the memo?)
migration to emulation or the addition of (clustered) emulation, and 
backing up there ~$0+
zip the data, and ftp or sftp it over onto another platform ~$0+

==
#these are cheap drives; optical isn't/wasn't cheap, and cheap switches 
are cheap.
*plus shipping
+requires existing hardware and OS X, BSD, Linux, Windows or well, 
whatever happens to spin the propeller on their beanie, and with 
adequate storage.

-- 
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