I got them working like that on a Dell Pentium 4 circa Y2K computer. Just have to install the driver that replaces the regular floppy driver so one or the other can use the same address without conflicts but not at the same time.
That sound of the tape drive brings back memories of when I was in high school. If I went to the library after 2pm. All the computers in the library would be turned off and the computer at the front desk would be backing up on the exact same tapes. The whole library would be hearing the tape backing up.
I had a lot of customers using those drives in the 90's and I thought I was pretty special when I got my very own QIC drive and spent the extra money for one that connected to my IDE controller. It was WAY faster than the floppy based ones
The hell of the QIC's is the rubber band that inhabited the cassette. When that snapped, you had two options. One find a replacement rubber band and perform surgery to replace the broken one. The other was to toss the cartridge and redo the backup.
DDS system used DAT audio tapes around the same era and evolved into several generations from 2GB in 1989 all the way up to 320GB in 2009. Digital 8 video tapes also used as Data storage from few manufacturers under their own proprietary storage system, All these use helical scan system, not linear which give them the advantage of packing more data compared to linear systems.
From late 286 onward many PC's could handle up to 4 floppy drives on the main controller. And the tape drive just took up 1 of those connections. I had Colorado drives in with 3 floppy drives more than once back in the mid- 90s.
In the late 1980s Dollar Rent A Car was still using 9-track tape for backups plus 10 pdp 11/23s and a pdp 11/08 for the reservations system. When I was at BBN the Sun 3/50 used cartridge tapes. So did the Xerox 8090 Network server.
My TD350 backs up to an external 10TB drive. Unfortunately Lenovo server division doesn't believe in "sleep" when not in use, so the external drive never does either! Don't buy a Lenovo server! gah!
I have the 120MB version of this drive and it still works flawlessly, I guess those newer QIC drives are a bit more reliable than the older ones ? Good video BTW, as always.
Man that sound takes me back. Just came across all my old DC 2120 QIC 80 tapes. Wondering if I should find one for my XT or not. Anyone think its worth the money?
Really enjoyed the video. Just in the process of trying out an old Colorado Tape Drive in an old 486 I have. The last time I used the drive was 2001, I still have the tapes.
This was a great watch! I've aquired over the past few years a bunch of old tapes used for backup. Lots of Travan which may have been more popular in the enterprise space I think... Either way a great primer on how this kind of stuff works. in 2022 I'm hoping to get some of the hardware to be able to read them. The 1hr 45M wipe sounds brutal... If you're wiping them in bulk you might just wanna try a magnet. I don't know the exact makeup of QIC but there's plenty of tape formats that are affected by magnets.
Then you have to re-initialize the tape. QIC doesn't really have a filesystem per-say but there's a bunch of header and format information that needs to be written back before you can use a tape again.
@@CelGenStudios What program can correct a bulk erased file system header? Are servo control tracks on the much older style QIC data tapes that are used on the Colorodo 250? Other sites claim these tapes can recover from a bulk eraser but when a guy I bought them from did that I can't get the tapes to work. Get the error that the header track can not be read with some errors claim the tape appears to be formatted but can not be read. Formatting process takes hours longer than it should then get one of the errors. I read that there is a program that can correct this on QIC tapes. Has anyone ever corrected this issue? Thank you in advance.
QIC didn't really use an embedded servo track like later formats such as LTO. They can be recovered under limited conditions if the block headers and footers or portions of the data are gone but tapes typically do not survive a hit from a bulk eraser. Unfortunately tape recovery is also not my specialty so I can't give much more for tips and advice. @@mrwebber35
Damn, that felt like time travel. Really, fascinating for me as an IT loving guy who was born in 1999 and really started using computers in 2010. Found this video through my search about LTO Drives, which I am getting into at the moment :) Thanks :) (I really loved about the Y2K-problem, and where happy to understand it 1111 1111 + 0000 0001 = 0000 0001
Funny enough I kinda jumped over DLT almost completely. After I used QIC in the early 2000's I went to Iomega Ditto, then briefly to VS160 before I got LTO3 gear for cheap and never looked back.
I found that whirring really annoying. And it did it for a long time after every tape insert. But it beat sitting there changing dozens of floppy disks.
I've been thinking of buying a tape drive for my modern machine (i3 12100 1660ti 32GB 3200 DDR4), not because it's the cheapest, cause it's not, but I have a 6TB hard drive and a 1TB NVME SSD, and the HDD is almost full. I plan on getting a used LTO 6 drive, which cost a few hundred dollars now, and can hold at minimum 2.5TB, so a couple tapes should do, and yes, I also have a second hard drive as another backup as well, but I want 2 formats, and recordable blu rays or flash drives aren't practical for me.
Im curious is there any storage that used audio cessette tapes, or VHS but taking advantage of PSK, or QAM analog coding? We use QAM every day WiFi n,ac, 4G, 5G, SDR, it's "very easy" to implement on cheap microcontroller STM32, ESP32 all it's needed 10kHz(audio), 1MHz(VHS) generator and mixer, and then ADC fast enough. STM32 is limited to ~100kHz could handle only audio tapes. Relative easy comparing to analog you had to have multiple mixers, delay lines etc. Lets say we use QAM256 is 8 bits per 1Hz teoretical limit of 10kHz x 90minutes x 2 stereo x 60 seconds per minute = 108MB, and 1MHz black white data x 8bits (1MB) x 180 minutes x 60 seconds per minute = 10.8GB VHS lets say we use 1/10th of that rest for Solomon codes or whatever. Not that much but technically VHS if handled by modern electronics could store DVD ! And Philips audio casette could store one digital album coded MP3s. Re-writeable!
i still have my colorado jumbo 250 in 1992-1993 i did not use the colorado cheesy software but central point pctools "cp backup" .instead of multiple rewind and writing and loosing time every rewind cp backup write without any interuption to the end of the tape and after that writing backward to the starting of the tape and so until the end of the backup that was cutting the time of the backup to 1/2. and 265meg of data on a 250meg 3M tape but also cp backup was able to read and write the colorado cheesy format.
oh i forgot to tell you you should have installed quartedek desqview to run your backup in a separate dos multitasking windows so in the same time you can continue to use your computer for doing something else instead of waiting after your backup or restore :)
56mHz! I bet that part of the display just doesn't work! 😂 great video! exactly what I was looking for. I never had the chance to use one of these drives but I think I did have one at one point
I have the exact same Colorado 250MB drive. Are servo control tracks on the much older style QIC data tapes that are used on the Colorado 250? Other sites claim these tapes can recover from a bulk eraser but when a guy I bought them from did that I can't get the tapes to work. Get the error that header track can not be read with some errors claim the tape appears to be formatted but can not be read. Formatting process takes hours longer than it should then get one of the errors. I read that there is a program that can correct this on QIC tapes. Has anyone ever corrected this issue or remember something about it? I have read about Linux using the ftape driver but doesn't mention about bulk erase recovery. C++ might be a way to go but looks like an entire semester at university back in the 1980's I really don't wish to go through. Thank you in advance.
You video got me interested in checking my own colorado drive, and the result was that all the tapes got the tape tangled up inside, damn tapes they are NOS, seem that time is not kind to them.
And some people judy ruin media no matter what technology you use. Too high temperatures or damp conditions could damage media easily. Also going over cycles of usage and start stops - like in video where proper streaming is not followed.
thanks for the video, you made me remember when i used this backup system, now i have backup tapes left from then and i would like to review the content so i need to find a colorado drive and card and old pc, where can i find the software, hello from Italy
I member those, I actually installed and setup one of those Colorado 250's on a 486DX50 Netware Server hehe, or was it a client dedicated to backups from that server? well what ever, it was backing up that server anywho :P
Interesting. I guess the one question is why couldn't the tape drive do streaming mode. You can hear it stop and start, and I remember that being a pain in terms of time. Were there better cards that could cache or feed the drive at an appropriate rate?
@@CelGenStudios Possibly. Or it's possible that an MFM/ESDI drive just can't keep up with the tape controller. ISA PC's were notoriously crappy when it came to DMA, and the introduction of EISA and MCA systems allowed for much faster transfers. In fact I think all of our tape backup servers ran with EISA busses. Hm, interesting stuff.
I have a 120 MB colorado. I connect it to my floppy controller (K7N2 Delta nForce 2 chipset motherboard). What do I do in the BIOS? It's not a floppy drive and there's no option for tape drive. How will the system see the drive if the BIOS does see it?
It doesn't exist to the BIOS. The operating system has to expect it to be there. Windows 98 may auto-detect it entirely on its own. The program I used you had to manually configure it.
Trying to get one of the Ditto QIC drives running to recover some data. Does anyone know what the measurement of the wheel that turns to goo should be? I have two drives both wheels are goo. I have a place to make me a turn for it, but.I have no idea how thick the wheel should be?? The raw wheel is 15.95mm on a caliper, with the goo removed mostly... Thank you!!
Are you talking about those Iomega ditto drives? Honestly, it would probably be less of a headache to just buy a NOS tape and pull out the wheels (assuming they aren’t goo too).
Colorado Backup is available on WinWorld in DOS and Windows versions. This style controller and drive are "Plug n' Pray" under Windows 95 and 98 using Windows Backup.
Should already be done. I forgotten where I found my copy but it seems Archive.org already has it listed - archive.org/details/ColoradoBackupForDOSJumboVer4501992
Really bad File System, putting pieces of the here and there instead of storing on RAM, or a temp file if RAM is limited, instead of having to track the tape back and forth
Your computer is too slow for the tape :) that's why it goes forward, stops, goes backwards again to find the end of the previous block, record again etc. Actually today's LTO is like QIC as there are linear tracks at all but they're read all at once by an expensive fine layered tape head :)
FYI, the tape drive originally came with a passthrough cable that would allow you to keep both floppy drives in operation.
I got them working like that on a Dell Pentium 4 circa Y2K computer. Just have to install the driver that replaces the regular floppy driver so one or the other can use the same address without conflicts but not at the same time.
Never thought I would have to sit and listen to a Jumbo 250 drive spool up again. Many hours of my life lost to this little drive !
That sound of the tape drive brings back memories of when I was in high school. If I went to the library after 2pm. All the computers in the library would be turned off and the computer at the front desk would be backing up on the exact same tapes. The whole library would be hearing the tape backing up.
Thanks for the video. I worked for Colorado Memory Systems from 93-97 doing Jumbo tape drive system. Loved hearing all the tape syncing sounds!! :-)
Any idea on how to get around a password I created 25 years ago?
I had a lot of customers using those drives in the 90's and I thought I was pretty special when I got my very own QIC drive and spent the extra money for one that connected to my IDE controller. It was WAY faster than the floppy based ones
Love this, brought back wat too many memories and nightmares keep up the good work
The hell of the QIC's is the rubber band that inhabited the cassette. When that snapped, you had two options. One find a replacement rubber band and perform surgery to replace the broken one. The other was to toss the cartridge and redo the backup.
DDS system used DAT audio tapes around the same era and evolved into several generations from 2GB in 1989 all the way up to 320GB in 2009. Digital 8 video tapes also used as Data storage from few manufacturers under their own proprietary storage system, All these use helical scan system, not linear which give them the advantage of packing more data compared to linear systems.
I had a HP Colorado T-1000 Travan Tape Drive back in the day and used that exact software to backup my computer.
Wrrrr.... Wrrrr :-D Real nostalgia!
I still have a jumbo 250 and used to backup the entire win 3.1 OS on these streamers, brought back memories of just how noisy these things were.
From late 286 onward many PC's could handle up to 4 floppy drives on the main controller. And the tape drive just took up 1 of those connections. I had Colorado drives in with 3 floppy drives more than once back in the mid- 90s.
In the late 1980s Dollar Rent A Car was still using 9-track tape for backups plus 10 pdp 11/23s and a pdp 11/08 for the reservations system.
When I was at BBN the Sun 3/50 used cartridge tapes. So did the Xerox 8090 Network server.
I don't remember the Sun tape drive making that much noise. I think it would make me nuts! lol
My TD350 backs up to an external 10TB drive. Unfortunately Lenovo server division doesn't believe in "sleep" when not in use, so the external drive never does either! Don't buy a Lenovo server! gah!
I remember this Colorado Jumbo sound so vividly!
I have the 120MB version of this drive and it still works flawlessly, I guess those newer QIC drives are a bit more reliable than the older ones ?
Good video BTW, as always.
Man that sound takes me back. Just came across all my old DC 2120 QIC 80 tapes. Wondering if I should find one for my XT or not. Anyone think its worth the money?
Really enjoyed the video. Just in the process of trying out an old Colorado Tape Drive in an old 486 I have. The last time I used the drive was 2001, I still have the tapes.
Nice! They look like MiniDV tape size. This stuff is still perfectly acceptable for tasks like writing.
This was a great watch! I've aquired over the past few years a bunch of old tapes used for backup. Lots of Travan which may have been more popular in the enterprise space I think... Either way a great primer on how this kind of stuff works. in 2022 I'm hoping to get some of the hardware to be able to read them.
The 1hr 45M wipe sounds brutal... If you're wiping them in bulk you might just wanna try a magnet. I don't know the exact makeup of QIC but there's plenty of tape formats that are affected by magnets.
Then you have to re-initialize the tape. QIC doesn't really have a filesystem per-say but there's a bunch of header and format information that needs to be written back before you can use a tape again.
@@CelGenStudios Does that take a while to write? I can see it being a problem if it needs to write data at the start of the tape AND the end
@@Thepaddster I don't believe so, but Colorado Backup retensions the tape in the process.
@@CelGenStudios What program can correct a bulk erased file system header? Are servo control tracks on the much older style QIC data tapes that are used on the Colorodo 250? Other sites claim these tapes can recover from a bulk eraser but when a guy I bought them from did that I can't get the tapes to work. Get the error that the header track can not be read with some errors claim the tape appears to be formatted but can not be read. Formatting process takes hours longer than it should then get one of the errors. I read that there is a program that can correct this on QIC tapes. Has anyone ever corrected this issue? Thank you in advance.
QIC didn't really use an embedded servo track like later formats such as LTO. They can be recovered under limited conditions if the block headers and footers or portions of the data are gone but tapes typically do not survive a hit from a bulk eraser. Unfortunately tape recovery is also not my specialty so I can't give much more for tips and advice. @@mrwebber35
Disk-On-Module to QIC tape, nice work.
Damn, that felt like time travel. Really, fascinating for me as an IT loving guy who was born in 1999 and really started using computers in 2010.
Found this video through my search about LTO Drives, which I am getting into at the moment :)
Thanks :)
(I really loved about the Y2K-problem, and where happy to understand it 1111 1111 + 0000 0001 = 0000 0001
Funny enough I kinda jumped over DLT almost completely. After I used QIC in the early 2000's I went to Iomega Ditto, then briefly to VS160 before I got LTO3 gear for cheap and never looked back.
Excellent discussion, thanks ..
I found that whirring really annoying. And it did it for a long time after every tape insert. But it beat sitting there changing dozens of floppy disks.
I've been thinking of buying a tape drive for my modern machine (i3 12100 1660ti 32GB 3200 DDR4), not because it's the cheapest, cause it's not, but I have a 6TB hard drive and a 1TB NVME SSD, and the HDD is almost full. I plan on getting a used LTO 6 drive, which cost a few hundred dollars now, and can hold at minimum 2.5TB, so a couple tapes should do, and yes, I also have a second hard drive as another backup as well, but I want 2 formats, and recordable blu rays or flash drives aren't practical for me.
Nice Canon photocopier -- I used to have the same one as a kid!!
I have that same tape drive in my 486 system.
There was another tape format, using VHS tapes to gain massive amount of storage. multiple gigabytes per tape.
Alpha Micro used VHS tapes for backup starting in the really 80s. Watching the backup through a VHS machine was interesting.
Love it! Dig the hairdoo aswell!
Thank you for a funny and learning video.
Im curious is there any storage that used audio cessette tapes, or VHS but taking advantage of PSK, or QAM analog coding? We use QAM every day WiFi n,ac, 4G, 5G, SDR, it's "very easy" to implement on cheap microcontroller STM32, ESP32 all it's needed 10kHz(audio), 1MHz(VHS) generator and mixer, and then ADC fast enough. STM32 is limited to ~100kHz could handle only audio tapes. Relative easy comparing to analog you had to have multiple mixers, delay lines etc. Lets say we use QAM256 is 8 bits per 1Hz teoretical limit of 10kHz x 90minutes x 2 stereo x 60 seconds per minute = 108MB, and 1MHz black white data x 8bits (1MB) x 180 minutes x 60 seconds per minute = 10.8GB VHS lets say we use 1/10th of that rest for Solomon codes or whatever. Not that much but technically VHS if handled by modern electronics could store DVD ! And Philips audio casette could store one digital album coded MP3s. Re-writeable!
i still have my colorado jumbo 250 in 1992-1993 i did not use the colorado cheesy software but central point pctools "cp backup" .instead of multiple rewind and writing and loosing time every rewind cp backup write without any interuption to the end of the tape and after that writing backward to the starting of the tape and so until the end of the backup that was cutting the time of the backup to 1/2. and 265meg of data on a 250meg 3M tape but also cp backup was able to read and write the colorado cheesy format.
oh i forgot to tell you you should have installed quartedek desqview to run your backup in a separate dos multitasking windows so in the same time you can continue to use your computer for doing something else instead of waiting after your backup or restore :)
56mHz! I bet that part of the display just doesn't work! 😂 great video! exactly what I was looking for. I never had the chance to use one of these drives but I think I did have one at one point
I have the exact same Colorado 250MB drive. Are servo control tracks on the much older style QIC data tapes that are used on the Colorado 250? Other sites claim these tapes can recover from a bulk eraser but when a guy I bought them from did that I can't get the tapes to work. Get the error that header track can not be read with some errors claim the tape appears to be formatted but can not be read. Formatting process takes hours longer than it should then get one of the errors. I read that there is a program that can correct this on QIC tapes. Has anyone ever corrected this issue or remember something about it? I have read about Linux using the ftape driver but doesn't mention about bulk erase recovery. C++ might be a way to go but looks like an entire semester at university back in the 1980's I really don't wish to go through. Thank you in advance.
Very good presentation. Well done!
I had one of these jumbo 250 drives donated to me. I was in school Had about 10 tapes. Fun times
You video got me interested in checking my own colorado drive, and the result was that all the tapes got the tape tangled up inside, damn tapes they are NOS, seem that time is not kind to them.
Yikes! I guess some tapes don't age as well as others.
And some people judy ruin media no matter what technology you use.
Too high temperatures or damp conditions could damage media easily.
Also going over cycles of usage and start stops - like in video where proper streaming is not followed.
hi had one they are very slow i have alot of back up drives that are working love the lto drives qic drive's are a pain
I used them for two or three years before I upgraded to Iomega Ditto. More capacity but not much faster.
thanks for the video, you made me remember when i used this backup system, now i have backup tapes left from then and i would like to review the content so i need to find a colorado drive and card and old pc, where can i find the software, hello from Italy
I just love your videos!
I member those, I actually installed and setup one of those Colorado 250's on a 486DX50 Netware Server hehe, or was it a client dedicated to backups from that server? well what ever, it was backing up that server anywho :P
Had a Ditto tape drive go bad on me. Same thing rubber wheel turned to mush and ruined the tape. Sucks
This was very interesting. Thanks.
Interesting. I guess the one question is why couldn't the tape drive do streaming mode. You can hear it stop and start, and I remember that being a pain in terms of time. Were there better cards that could cache or feed the drive at an appropriate rate?
I think it was a cost reduction.
@@CelGenStudios Possibly. Or it's possible that an MFM/ESDI drive just can't keep up with the tape controller. ISA PC's were notoriously crappy when it came to DMA, and the introduction of EISA and MCA systems allowed for much faster transfers. In fact I think all of our tape backup servers ran with EISA busses.
Hm, interesting stuff.
That brought back memories. Great video. Thanks :)
I have a 120 MB colorado. I connect it to my floppy controller (K7N2 Delta nForce 2 chipset motherboard). What do I do in the BIOS? It's not a floppy drive and there's no option for tape drive. How will the system see the drive if the BIOS does see it?
It doesn't exist to the BIOS. The operating system has to expect it to be there. Windows 98 may auto-detect it entirely on its own. The program I used you had to manually configure it.
Trying to get one of the Ditto QIC drives running to recover some data. Does anyone know what the measurement of the wheel that turns to goo should be? I have two drives both wheels are goo. I have a place to make me a turn for it, but.I have no idea how thick the wheel should be?? The raw wheel is 15.95mm on a caliper, with the goo removed mostly... Thank you!!
Are you talking about those Iomega ditto drives? Honestly, it would probably be less of a headache to just buy a NOS tape and pull out the wheels (assuming they aren’t goo too).
please please may can you upload those drivers or tell me where i can find them?
Colorado Backup is available on WinWorld in DOS and Windows versions. This style controller and drive are "Plug n' Pray" under Windows 95 and 98 using Windows Backup.
@@CelGenStudios thank you
Can you archive the install diskette?
I found version 4,03
Should already be done. I forgotten where I found my copy but it seems Archive.org already has it listed - archive.org/details/ColoradoBackupForDOSJumboVer4501992
Really bad File System, putting pieces of the here and there instead of storing on RAM, or a temp file if RAM is limited, instead of having to track the tape back and forth
2:26 McMoon's!
I'm surprised it only took 17 minutes
Plug and pray you mean...
T A P E
Your computer is too slow for the tape :) that's why it goes forward, stops, goes backwards again to find the end of the previous block, record again etc.
Actually today's LTO is like QIC as there are linear tracks at all but they're read all at once by an expensive fine layered tape head :)
Never liked it. Changes in room temperature didn't help.