Far out (useless?) idea: QIC-117 ("floppy tape") support.

[mr.vince]

I don't think we ever got hands on one of these drives...

[IFW]

No, never had any drive or known good tape sent.

[Darkstar]

Okay, if you give me an address I can send you 1 or 2 drives (at least one of them probably still works) and a couple of tapes (for which I cannot guarantee that they still work or contain meaningful data), provided that I will get at least 1 (or both) of the drives (and the tapes) back at some point. And provided that I won't find my old tape backups on PirateBay or anywhere else on the net

[Darkstar]

Nobody interested in adding support for QIC tapes to KryoFlux/DTC?

[IFW]

We really need to see if there is real world interest.
Can anyone who would *really* find this useful post here, please?

[Darkstar]

There's probably little interest in personal/private circles. Many people didn't have Streamers back then. But for preservation or data recovery, I think there's a lot more interest

[IFW]

Well, in that case uers with commercial licenses could let us know their interest in here, please.

[Malvineous]

Maybe you could find a company that has important data they need to restore from a QIC tape and have them sponsor the addition of this feature

Out of curiosity, since the KF's low level features are mainly aimed at preserving copy-protection, is there a real need to support what is essentially a backup tape? Wouldn't it be easier to stick a drive in a PC and use the original software to copy everything off the tape? If there is no need to preserve any copy protection or duplicator data, all you really need is a clean read. I'm not sure the KF could do significantly better than the original software, since it would be working within the same limitations like (I guess) being unable to rewind the tape a little to re-read the same "track" a few times.

I am guessing that these sorts of things would require some fundamental changes in DTC, because you are no longer reading a random-access disk but a sequential-access tape. What would -c2 (calibrate maximum track) even do with a QIC drive?

[Darkstar]

Wouldn't it be easier to stick a drive in a PC and use the original software to copy everything off the tape? If there is no need to preserve any copy protection or duplicator data, all you really need is a clean read. I'm not sure the KF could do significantly better than the original software, since it would be working within the same limitations like (I guess) being unable to rewind the tape a little to re-read the same "track" a few times.

That's exactly what I wanted to find out. I have a few tapes which have trouble being read correctly (frequent seeks and retries, bad blocks, etc.), maybe if KF can dump the "raw" data in the tapes as well these could be recovered. But I cannot be certain until someone with access to the code takes a look.

@IFW: What are the requirements and benefits of a "commercial" KF license? I haven't found anything about it on the Web page. Maybe you can elaborate a bit?

-Darkstar

[IFW]

Depends on licence type; but for example allowed usage in a commercial environment, ie not as a hobby device, the possibility of supporting specific formats without exposing them to other users (e.g. things considered to be trade secrets/under NDA and the like), possibility to request data recovery services and so on...
If you really need that kind licence/support please contact licensing AT kryoflux DOT com