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Title says it all.

Yet after pondering on this topic, I come up empty handed other than this: Data backups hava a high cost value.
We are rocking multiple NAS setups at work, and when the numbers are crunched, they are cheaper than a DAT backup system.

I feel as if DAT/LTO is for the enthusiasts of data backup/one-ups.

If I could find a relitivly nice DAT 72 drive with a SATA interface for about $100-$150, ill buy it....for myself. Yes.

In this day and age why would you want to use DAT 72? It really isn't expensive compared to single tape LTO4 drives (500 -600 vs 1500 - 2000) and especially compared to the automated ones. The media is much cheaper (15 vs 80) but holds much less (36 GB native vs 800 GB native).

Why?

People do bluray drives, raid setups, home nas storage, raid with ssds, etc to claim top dog...well we (twelve of us) have a "retro" top dog competition. And a friend just installed a 5.25 floppy drive in his win 7 system and currently holds the retro crown (a gold painted punchcard taped to a burger king crown). Well,
I'm on a mission to try to take away the retro crown. And I have always wanted a DAT drive anyway.

Another friend is working on a token ring system for his house to claim the retro crown.
Another member is working on getting an old 8 inch HDD to work.

The rules are:
-The item must work in Windows 7 64bit with the items full functionality.
-Other participants will judge the level of "retroness" and decide if the crown should be awarded.
-Unorthodox parts (ie, Nintendo power glove) are not allowed to be modded to work. Only legit computer hardware.

I held the crown for a month (with my dot martix printer) and had it taken away for the floppy drive.

This is geekishly getting good.

EDIT: I know tape drives are still in use, but using a tape drive has been cleared as retro. Thus my pursuits. And if anyone has one for sale... PM me.

Sounds like fun. I don't think you will win with 2003 technology especially if you are up against 5.25 floppy drives.

You can find some old SCSI drives that were mated with a ISA conversion card... hook it up to a 80 pin PCI controller (since ISA is toast)... I still have one in my closet from a Tandy back in the 90s when Radioshack sold them.


BTW a awesome idea... it's kinda sad that we have no more reason to buy good hardware and brag about it, so now we're finding old hardware to brag about now. XD

Hmmm. PCI or PCIe SCSI card hooked up to an external SCSI 3.5" floppy drive. I might have to give that concept a shot!

The only 8" floppy drives I have are hooked up to S100 bus machines. :\

Actually, if you could find some HVD (high-voltage differential, up to 25-meter cable lengths) 5.25" SCSI hard drives and a card to support them, that'd be pretty esoteric. Or a Castlewood Orb drive.

You could also get a HardSID, http://www.hardsid.com/ It uses the ol' C64 synth chips. Has Win64 drivers. They used to have internal cards but I think it was more cost-effective to do external USB boxes.

Slightly off topic from the DAT, BUT....what if TechReport created a retro crown competition?

You'd have to either have categories or some specific restrictions. I can just imagine some old greybeard with a PDP-9 automatically winning.

Your restrictions are kind of neat. Must work in Win7 x64. Now THAT's a tough one.

Scrotos wrote:

Your restrictions are kind of neat. Must work in Win7 x64. Now THAT's a tough one.

I hope that lot is competent in hand-crufting 64-bit drivers for something designed to hook to 8-bit or 16-bit systems (I remember the rush when the 286 came out and we could move to 16-bit). Since that hardware wanted direct metal access, getting it to work in Win64 will be challenging.

And I almost threw away my Genius Colorpage CS scanner. SCSI. 1997. Now, thanks to ClickClick5, I became aware that it's a true oldtimer, not just a crappy piece of beige plastics ... I'm going to sell it but I need not hurry.

Scrotos: we TR readers love benchmarks. We just need an universal rating system so that everyone can compete. Here's an idea for one category: Pi calculation speed per kilogram, multiplied by age (or better yet, exponential function of age).

We could lax the Windows 7 64 bit restriction to just Windows 7 in general. Bonus points for those who find/write a driver for 64bit if need be.
This could actually be something cool to see. Write wout a few rules and such, then let loose.

Update: One of the guys did a 1987 DIN5 keyboard to PS/2 to USB. He was given a joke award: The Loud Key Award.

I'm sure I have a DDS-2 or DDS-3 drive around here (probably Seagate) if any of your club needs one. Probably an Adaptec 2930U2W to go with it too.

I remember when my system was all-SCSI just so I wouldn't run out of IRQs. Two hard drives, Zip, DVD-ROM, CD Writer, HP ScanJet 4C. I'm glad I don't have to do that any more.