Tape Backup 40SC

[mousehouse]

Recently bought a Mac Classic that turned out to be seriously rotting inside. With help of an awesome Mac hero got it working again…

But it came with an external HD who was originally a tape drive. It now has a full height 3.5 drive installed that I still need to test.

Does anybody know what tape drive was used by Apple? I might want to restore it to original state.

 

[mousehouse]

 

[mousehouse]

Drive is working. Funny enough the drive icon is an image of the unit with a tape in front. Wow… where does it get that from…

It’s a 20MB drive, I think a Connor. Still works like a charm after rusting away for two decades in storage.

 

[cheesestraws]

Funny enough the drive icon is an image of the unit with a tape in front. Wow… where does it get that from…

The icon is provided by the driver: devices can have basically any icon they like.

 

[LaPorta]

Did they only use 40 MB tapes? One would assume that from the "40 SC" bit. Odd, though.

 

[NJRoadfan]

The drive takes DC2000 QIC tapes and uses a 3M mech. The biggest issue with these if I recall is that the pinch roller turns to goo and/or whatever tapes you find tend to have tension band problems.

 

[mousehouse]

I have a few other tape drives and sure thing, they are challenging. I’ll Google a bit more for the tape drive model. Impressed with the mega noisy drive still running

 

[olePigeon]

Did they only use 40 MB tapes? One would assume that from the "40 SC" bit. Odd, though.

Probably 20 MB / 40 MB compressed. That's an old trick by tape manufacturers that's still around today. There might be a STAC chip in there to do real-time compression.

 

[mousehouse]

I’ve browsed about a million tape drive ads on EBay but am not able to find any 20 / 40 QIC drives. If somebody knows the exact type used by Apple please share!

 

[olePigeon]

@mousehouse NJRoadFan says they use 40MB cartridges. Here're some cheap 40MB tape cartridges.

 

[mousehouse]

@mousehouse NJRoadFan says they use 40MB cartridges. Here're some cheap 40MB tape cartridges.

Nice! Yes found those as well. Just can’t find a drive that takes them…

 

[olePigeon]

Oh, right. I missed the part about how it had a HDD and not the tape drive.