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[blusnowkitty]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124651364516

Just bring your own QIC drive, chassis, and high-speed parallel card!

[sigma7]

A particularly hard to find component of the DataTower is the DS101 controller board.

This is the board that connects to the Lisa expansion card, but is not a standard part of the large Priam drives that come up for sale regularly. It has two daughterboard connectors, one is used for the tape drive interface in the DataTower, the combination is shown here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/114907644@N04/18657104320

In 2020 there was an eBay listing for 3 DS101 boards; I purchased one but received a SMART-E board (not a DS101 as was pictured in the listing). I think Al Kossow purchased one too, but I don't know what he received.

There is currently a listing for a lot of 7 "DS101" boards from the same seller (antzzworld https://www.ebay.com/usr/antzzworld).

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234604052411

There is a DS101 in most of the pictures (identifiable by the two blue socket headers where daughterboards such as the tape controller go, and which are not on any other Priam boards AFAIK). However there is a different (not a DS101) Priam board in the first picture. No suggestion of what is in the other 5 boxes; presumably also large Priam boards of some type but they could be anything as the seller is rather casual with listings.

I've tried contacting the seller to inquire as to whether the pictures show the actual items (since my experience with this seller is otherwise), but received no response. Accordingly I'm not going to gamble the substantial shipping fee to send these to me in western Canada.

Another unknown for these boards is whether they work. They have bits of string at a corner where toe-tags have been removed; given the condition of the boxes, these might have been "needs service" tags, but could have been for inventory control or anything else.

The DS101 board in the DataTower I have didn't work at first, but I was able to cobble together a repair as shown here https://www.flickr.com/photos/114907644@N04/18222211294 which was enough to get it working for testing with BLU (but still haven't worked on the tape drive).  Sorry, I haven't found the posting where I explained the problem and solution. I expect to post more details, but it may have been a one-off problem that no-one else has. Hence my desire to obtain another DS101 to see if it has the same problem.


edit: found post outlining the problem/solution I was thinking of... https://lisalist2.com/lisalist1/2374.html
Note the link to photos in that post may be out of date (as well as obscured), the links in this post go to the same photo album.

[blusnowkitty]

I saw that listing too! I wasn't considering making a bid, but knowing that there's possibly the right board to connect a Priam to a Lisa... although I still need to track down a Priam interface card...

Is it even worth trying to fix up the tape drive? It appears as if it's a QIC style drive, which is notoriously unreliable nowadays. I suppose if we found a tape of the Office System source code...

[sigma7]

Is it even worth trying to fix up the tape drive? It appears as if it's a QIC style drive, which is notoriously unreliable nowadays.

QIC presents multiple problems, but I hope to include support for it in BLU (eventually) just in case something important surfaces.

Current problems are:
 - Drive wheel rubber has turned into goo
 - Drive belt in DC600 Cartridge has stretched so tape doesn't spool properly
 - Tape stuck together etc. (common problems for old magnetic tapes)

Fixing the drive wheel is not too difficult.

Perhaps 10 years ago or so, one could find a cartridge with a good enough drive belt and transfer it to the target cartridge, but I doubt there are any usable ones now. Apparently they were stamped / die cut from polyethylene sheets, so I'm thinking one might experiment with rings of various diameters cut from various thicknesses of vapour barrier.

Dealing with old magnetic tape seems to be well covered by audio folks.

But those issues may be moot... at least we've seen DS101 boards for sale, I've never seen mention of the tape drive daughterboard.
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/priam/dataTower/PCB/SMART-T_QIC_top.jpg

Product spec. "Priam Aux 1 (QIC-02) Auxiliary Control Board)" found on bitsavers (thanks Al!)
eg. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/priam/smart-t/Priam_Aux1_QIC-02_Controller_Feb84.pdf

Perhaps there is some minicomputer system group (for PDP-11 or the like) that presents a better source for these.

[sigma7]

In this reply I originally miswrote:

Another limitation of the DataTower tape system is that it seems that it isn't a streaming tape as far as Lisa is concerned.

The tape will back up and restore the Priam hard drive, but is otherwise inaccessible.

I may be completely wrong about this -- if I ever get it working then I may find otherwise.

However I realize now that is very probably incorrect and the Lisa can in fact address the tape drive directly.

[stepleton]

I have some experience lately replacing the drive bands in DC-300 tapes. I think DC-600s are the same size.

You can cannibalise the bands from DC-6150 tapes if you like (and it may be that the 6150s will just work in place of the 600s, oersteds be darned --- it turns out that they function just fine in place of the DC-300s my IBM 5100 likes, for example).

If you don't want to cannibalise old tapes of any kind, then you can make do with latex-free polyurethane "rubber" (not really rubber) bands. I've used 6mm/150mm Mobilon bands by Nisshinbo, and let me tell you, these are not much fun to try and import into the UK. Perhaps getting them into the US or Canada is easier.

All this said, I am sure that the community would love to have even more ideas for how to replace those bands.

[sigma7]

... need to track down a Priam interface card...

If you can't find one by the time you've collected all the other necessary parts, I think one will be easy to reproduce. See this thread in the files section https://lisalist2.com/index.php/topic,296.0.html

[sigma7]

You can cannibalise the bands from DC-6150 tapes

Good info, thanks! Are these or anything equivalent still in production by anyone?

If you don't want to cannibalise old tapes of any kind, then you can make do with latex-free polyurethane "rubber" (not really rubber) bands. I've used 6mm/150mm Mobilon bands by Nisshinbo

These for example? https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Mobilon-Diameter-Approx-Cleaning-Regular/dp/B084C52378
(Says unavailable for Canada; switching to a jp post code (eg. 408-0307 randomly scraped from google) shows a price.
They seem to be referred to as for cleaning, but it is not clear what they clean; perhaps that's a clue how to find them closer to home?
Other sites suggest Mobilon loops are used (instead of elastic) for garments and hair ties.

[stepleton]

You can cannibalise the bands from DC-6150 tapes

Good info, thanks! Are these or anything equivalent still in production by anyone?

I've never heard anyone mention anything like that, so I assume not, but I'm not certain.

(In re Mobilon bands:)

These for example? https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Mobilon-Diameter-Approx-Cleaning-Regular/dp/B084C52378
(Says unavailable for Canada; switching to a jp post code (eg. 408-0307 randomly scraped from google) shows a price.
They seem to be referred to as for cleaning, but it is not clear what they clean; perhaps that's a clue how to find them closer to home?
Other sites suggest Mobilon loops are used (instead of elastic) for garments and hair ties.

Yes, that looks like the item, albeit in a different bag to what I'm used to.

I dimly remember something about cleaning when I was acquiring my own bands. I wasn't certain what it meant either, but I assumed that it had something to do with bundling clothes or fabrics together for some kind of washing process. I have no real idea. In any case, these are just bands that feel like rubber bands but a bit more slippery and perhaps a bit stiffer.

It's worth saying that most people using these bands on tapes seem to me to be using them for a single round of data recovery. Opinions differ on how worthwhile they are for extended use, with some people saying that they're fine and others saying that they have a tendency to stretch. I haven't tested all that much, as while I've verified that they work in tapes after re-banding, most of my workhorse tapes are using DC-6150 bands, and those really do seem to pass the test of time. There's no real preference at work here, just precedence: those "workhorse tapes" are just the ones I re-banded first and were at the top of the stack.

To get the Mobilon bands in the UK, I sourced through Misumi, a retailer that seems to want to do business only with other businesses. If you can place an order through a business of your own, you might not have trouble. Then again, I looked briefly, and it appears that Misumi may handle Canadian orders through its US arm, which might be its own hassle. In any case, if I'm right about all this, then this is the listing for you: https://us.misumi-ec.com/vona2/detail/223000860382/ . The size to choose is 6mm width and 150mm "folding diameter".

You might also look out for the brand "plastiband", which appears to be the same product but fancier colours and different packaging. These appear to come in assortments of different sizes, and I'm not sure if they come in the size necessary for DC-300/600/6150/etc. tapes. HP people seem to like these for re-banding the smaller cartridges used by HP-80 series and HP-9820/30 series calculators.

Good luck!

[compu_85]

So is the "Archive Tape" driver part of Lisa OS 3.1 not for the tape drive in the Data Tower?

[sigma7]

So is the "Archive Tape" driver part of Lisa OS 3.1 not for the tape drive in the Data Tower?

Sorry for my confusion; it is for the DataTower's tape, but for some reason now forgotten, I thought for a long time that the Lisa could not read/write the tape directly. Perhaps due to the examples in the DS101 manual covering only copying between a disk and tape on the same controller.

I recognize now that this is another memory failure -- I found a 2020 email exchange with Al Kossow wherein I concluded the DataTower Archive tape drive is indeed (probably) block addressable or something similar due to some document he provided.

[jamesdenton]

A particularly hard to find component of the DataTower is the DS101 controller board.

This is the board that connects to the Lisa expansion card, but is not a standard part of the large Priam drives that come up for sale regularly. It has two daughterboard connectors, one is used for the tape drive interface in the DataTower, the combination is shown here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/114907644@N04/18657104320

In 2020 there was an eBay listing for 3 DS101 boards; I purchased one but received a SMART-E board (not a DS101 as was pictured in the listing). I think Al Kossow purchased one too, but I don't know what he received.

There is currently a listing for a lot of 7 "DS101" boards from the same seller (antzzworld https://www.ebay.com/usr/antzzworld).

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234604052411

There is a DS101 in most of the pictures (identifiable by the two blue socket headers where daughterboards such as the tape controller go, and which are not on any other Priam boards AFAIK). However there is a different (not a DS101) Priam board in the first picture. No suggestion of what is in the other 5 boxes; presumably also large Priam boards of some type but they could be anything as the seller is rather casual with listings.

I've tried contacting the seller to inquire as to whether the pictures show the actual items (since my experience with this seller is otherwise), but received no response. Accordingly I'm not going to gamble the substantial shipping fee to send these to me in western Canada.

Another unknown for these boards is whether they work. They have bits of string at a corner where toe-tags have been removed; given the condition of the boxes, these might have been "needs service" tags, but could have been for inventory control or anything else.

The DS101 board in the DataTower I have didn't work at first, but I was able to cobble together a repair as shown here https://www.flickr.com/photos/114907644@N04/18222211294 which was enough to get it working for testing with BLU (but still haven't worked on the tape drive).  Sorry, I haven't found the posting where I explained the problem and solution. I expect to post more details, but it may have been a one-off problem that no-one else has. Hence my desire to obtain another DS101 to see if it has the same problem.

My curiosity got the better of me here.

Of the seven boards, four (4) match the description you gave for DS101 boards, while the other three (3) appear to be the SMART-E boards. Of the four DS101 boards, 3 of them were in sealed boxes (maybe resealed, but 35-year old tape).

If you're interested in one or two (or all) of the DS101s, PM me and we can work out the details. Maybe I can repurpose the 7400-series ICs on the SMART-E boards for broken CPU and I/O boards I have laying around here

[sigma7]

My curiosity got the better of me here.

Of the seven boards, four (4) match the description you gave for DS101 boards, while the other three (3) appear to be the SMART-E boards.

Awesome!