Saturday post-schlep computer geekery?

[damont]

This is primarily aimed at friends in the DC FedroSplat. Some friends know that I have a need to read some QIC-150 tapes, preferably before I go to bed Monday night. I have a QIC-150 tape drive, but it requires an ISA slot to work (proprietary interface).

If anyone has a working Linux or ****BSD box with an available ISA slot that I could borrow, I'd appreciate it. Or if you have a working system with a working QIC-150 drive, that would be extra cool. Failing that, I have two 486-66 boxes that appear to have BIOS issues with finding IDE CD-ROM drives, and a Pentium-200 box (as yet untested), with various and assorted hardware. Anyone able and willing to lend (or donate) hardware to the cause is welcome to do so.

Now, this afternoon (Saturday the 24th), is Le Grande Schleppe Part Deux, but after that, would there be interest in helping me get those bloody tapes read? I know it's short notice so I'm not expecting too many "yes" replies, but if I do get any, I'll be delighted (and we can work out details after I've had some sleep).

EDIT 28 May 08: some progress has been made. Got two machines from draftwitch and Paul, one with Win2K on it, the other we installed Ubuntu 7.10 on. The interface card is currently jumpered to signal on IRQ 3, which is its default; thus we had to disable COM2, and both the WIn2K box and Ubuntu box appear to see *something* there... they just have no clue *what*. It appears that I'll need drivers, and possibly the "ftape" utility on the Linux side, if I want to make further progress. Help?

Comments

[draftwitch.livejournal.com]

Paul has two machines that will fit your task. One is a very old DX4/100 with VESAlocalbus, has about 16MB of RAM and had Win 3.1 on it. The other is a Pentium 200 with 128 MB RAM, and we think it has Linux on it right now - overclocked to 233. It's fully functional - there's nothing wrong with it.

Let us know what you'd like to do.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Looks like I could use at least the Pentium if not both. How should we go about effecting the hand-off?

[craig trader (from livejournal.com)]

I have a working computer that would need to have a Linux distro loaded on it (it's a former firewall/router) that should fit the bill. Of course Carrie & I will be gone most of the weekend, so you'd need to pick it up ASAP this morning (ie: before noon) or pick it up Monday after we get back.