300 data tapes

From Acclaim? I doubt there'll be anything that good there unless they were going to release something from a hot indie developer.

Yakumo

 

I was more hopping for archived SDKs, documentation and what not, not Acclaim stuff ;-)

 

Glad you've finally got round to thinking about these again ;-)

Yup, big job. I'd be happy to help wherever I can. I could even try to pop over for a bit, need a holiday!

First thing is to decide on an order to tackle them, and preferably get them backed up to hard drive first - tape is a volatile media. Then go from there.

 

Tape drives are accessed via SCSI commands, each drive will work with many programs so they don't necessarily come with a program. Most companies would either buy a Windows suite to do scheduled backups or write their own batch backup script for UNIX programs.

Some programs can encrypt the entire volume too, so if that's the case, there's little hope. Another thing to consider is that there isn't a universal way to make a raw dump of the tape, I think very few drives will allow you to do this without custom firmware and software, and because of that few if any public programs will have an option for this.

I think the best plan would be to just send a tape or two to a data recovery speSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMt for an estimate. They've got the custom tools, huge libraries of relevant hardware and software. Without a doubt they can read the tapes, and determine the chances of recovery. Assuming the tapes aren't physically damaged, it may not even be that expensive.

 

300 tapes? It's time - pick up your money pockets pals!

 

I'm in the same boat Assembler except my tapes came from Sierra On-Line. I've bought a 1/2 dozen or so different backup drives and found that an old version of Veritas seems to work the best or whatever software came with the backup drive in many cases.

I have found TONS of tapes that are pw protected. Not the files on them, but literally the tape itself. Many of them are labeled "PYRO ENGINE". I think I talked with OE abouit it a long time ago. I've considered a data recovery company, but the cost was CRAZY. One of them is labeled "OLD GAMES DO NOT DELETE". I can only imagine what treasures might be on that one!

 

I made a thread about 3 Imation DC 300XLP data tapes I had labeled M2 a while back, but no one ever took me seriously.

 

Well, now we do!
Did you manage to get ahold of them?

 

Yeah, I made the thread almost 3 years ago and they've been sitting in the same place ever since. Don't want em' either, but they've never bothered me.

 

I also have a tape from Sega... waiting for the tape drive to arrive. Now I hope it's not password protected. Then again the Sega guys did use crappy passwords back then =P

 

If money's ever needed for hardware or pro services or whatever, I'm definitely in.

Assembler, didn't you say you had a shitton of EPROMs too?

 

i can only offer it again: i am able to crack these passwords (most likely)

 

guess its time to digg up the old streamer tapes that are hidden somewhere in the cellar i know they have many appz on them but then i never needed them
gotta ask some friends that had already dat tape drives privatly in the early 90s if they have still anything left of that

 

We should get like five people to take a trip to your area and have an EPROM reading party. We'll order pizza and copy all your EPROMs for hours and hours and it will be the saddest thing ever.

(I'm actually kind of serious, I'd even take a trip to help out)

 

If ya ever need me to take a drive down to you assembler, Im more then willing to pick some stuff up

 

It took me a moment or two to realise that the bit replaced by the SPAMSPAM was the letters 'cia' and 'lis'. Maybe the spam filter needs toning down a little!