https://www.cyberciti.biz/hardware/unix … -commands/

especially thelsscsi program.

list all SCSI devices (or hosts) currently on system

edited: got the command wrong for lsscsi, i typed lsscpi

Indeed ...

The problem was that this hardware (my opinion) was not really something solid like all the SCSI tape drives out there at the time.
The advantage was that it was much less expensive to get a QIC/Travan etc. and run it from a parallel port or IDE adaptor card.
But for most, not the real thing.

In my day, I had a QIC and a Travan under Windows but found them to be slow and unreliable.

Here's a link to old Ubuntu releases:

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/

Try Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) or Ubuntu 6.06.2 LTS (Dapper Drake), both have 64bit DVD Live editions:

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases … -amd64.iso
http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases … -amd64.iso

Quite so.

With relatively inexpensive fast HDDs to make a multiple Tb NAS with very little investment, tape ends up being cumbersome.
And no, I will not store anything in any cloud.

A cloud is just water vapour: one moment it's there, the next it's gone.

I had my last DAT DD2 drive sitting atop my box for the longest while and finally decided to move it out of the way last week.
A beautiful Sun Microsystems external box hosting a Seagate Scorpion 8000 which saw very little use.
Maybe the box, PS and SCSI board will be of use for something.

Ahh ...
So that's it.  8^D !

You'll still need the application used to make the tape or download it raw and pick out the bits.

Once you find out what you can do by booting the Ubuntu DVD, you may want to make a VM see if you can access it from there.
Much better than trying anything with the 486.

Cheers,

A.

Did you try exporting the TAPE variable:

export TAPE=/dev/stX

okay, mt definetly recognized this variable

sorry i cant find anything usefull in /sys/devices/pci0000:00/ , that directory has way to much stuff inside that i never worked with and i dont understand

that might be it
sadly ftape and zftape are not in the kernel anymore

i just downloaded linux-2.1.131

linux-2.1.131.tar.xz                               03-Dec-1998 01:55      8M

ah 1998, the year i got my first computer

i never tried building anything that old, will try it during the next week
if anyone knows where i can find an old ubuntu or debian iso from that time, please let me know

of course that eliminates any practical usecase for that tape drive, but i am still curious what might be sitting on that tape

thanks very much to everyone who participaded in this thread
you posted a lot of good recources

edit: at some point i may just try to just put it back into that old 486 where i ripped it out and access it from there
but we dont have that monochrome monitor anymore, would it work with any starndard old crt?

It seems that what is needed is to load the proper driver modules.

ie: modprobe zftape -> depends ftape

This will load zftape and ftape, creating all needed devices under /dev, so there's no MAKEDEV to run.

But this was when you could actually find ftape and zftape for your kernel.

zftape and ftape went awol quite a few years ago, so they were taken out of the kernel from 2.x something on.
I have read in one post that maybe some old Ubuntu may have it, so booting that from a CD may be a solution.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.co … with-ftape

Check out these posts:

http://thewunders.org/SxS/storage/ftape.html

https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Ftape-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.1

https://github.com/Godzil/ftape

https://dmitrybrant.com/2020/11/01/how- … -qic-tapes

Good luck ...  8^)

Best,

A.

^ that is what i was thinking needed to happen when i looked at the  mt-gnu manpage, i have hadnt much to do with mknod, i suppose it is similiar to makedev.

Are you sure it's a scsi | tape device? Have a look at the device/type file in the same path to the filesystem [1] you are taking the MAJOR:MINOR numbers from. If i'm not mistaken, the different options are (taken from the code of vdev [2]):

   0 : DISK
   1 : TAPE
   4 : OPTICAL
   5 : CD
   7 : OPTICAL
0xe : DISK
0xf : OPTICAL

[1] For example, something looking like this:
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:04:00.3/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sdc/device/type

[2] lines nº1145 - 1168 in vdevd/helpers/LINUX/stat_scsi.c:
https://github.com/jcnelson/vdev/blob/m … tat_scsi.c

you mean just do

sudo ln /dev/sdc /dev/tape

?

sudo mt-gnu status 
mt-gnu: /dev/tape is not a character special file

Did you try exporting the TAPE variable:

export TAPE=/dev/stX

mt-gnu might use the value of this variable as the default device, so that you'll be able to by-pass the /dev/tape symlink.

Ralph is right, tape devices should be named /dev/stX.

Perhaps a plain

# modprobe st

is sufficient, or maybe it needs some more intricate incantation.

(Possibly it needs a tape loaded at the time)

Look up Documentation/scsi/st.rst in the kernel source for details of that module.

sudo ln /dev/sdc /dev/tape

?

sudo mt-gnu status 
mt-gnu: /dev/tape is not a character special file

as i said earlier, mt-gnu expects a character special file or a remote tape drive
can i create that file with mknod or something?
i tried

mknod tape c 8 32

where 8 and 32 are MAJ and MIN from /dev/sdc
but no success

Try with the b flag instead of c, for block-oriented devices:

mknod /dev/{filename} b MAJOR MINOR

so is this thing attached to a floppy drive?

i used this adapter --> link

there is no indicator, but im sure i have it correctly now
the usb device would show up either way but only when it is right side up, it shows sdc in lsblk

as i said earlier, mt-gnu expects a character special file or a remote tape drive
can i create that file with mknod or something?
i tried

mknod tape c 8 32

where 8 and 32 are MAJ and MIN from /dev/sdc
but no success

Nice find.  8^)

The key to this may be here:

Check that the USB Floppy adapter is correctly inserted.
It should (?) have a key (like the IDE cables did) or some indication in the adapter's manual/instruction sheet.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditto_(drive)
https://www.manualslib.com/products/Iom … 35190.html   <---- | x |
https://johnvidler.co.uk/linux-journal/LJ/022/1215.html
http://pong.tamu.edu/~baum/linux/LDP/HO … TO-28.html

Edit:
https://tldp.org/HOWTO/pdf/ZIP-Drive.pdf

Best,

A.

maybe you need fdutils?

# apt install fdutils

might be problematic due to the usb connection of the tape drives.

Have a read of this here: https://www.linux.org/threads/how-do-i- … ive.33919/

I know yours is not a travan tape drive but could be a similar issue.