Flash and various drive questions

[stevetabler]

I have several Onstream 30 GB tapes I'm trying to read. It seems my ancient SC-30 drive has quit. After much looking around, I obtained a DI-30. But it seems I didn't obtain a "normal" DI-30. The label on it calls it a DI30-VTC12 with a flash version of W12U.

I would like to know if I can flash this drive to something else? i.e. 1.09?

Are there any differences between a normal DI-30 and this DI30-VTC12?

 

[gwootton]

There were 2 kinds of DI-30's made, a first and second generation. One runs a 1.0x firmware, one runs 4.1x. I haven't heard of one saying w12u though. The windows version of the 1.09 firmware updater should scan the drive and give the current firmware version, so you may want to try checking it that way, and then load the appropriate firmware version from there.
Thanks,
Greg

 

[stevetabler]

The computer I'm working with for purposes of data recovery from the tapes is a bare-bones dual-boot: Windows 98SE and Windows 2000.

I was unable to get the Windows version of the flash updater for the regular DI30 (as opposed to what is listed on the Hastec site as DI30FAST) to even SEE the drive. I tried earlier vcersions, besides the 1.09. I tried both Winndows environments. So I made a Windows 98 boot floppy, copied the DOS updater for 1.09 to that, and rebooted.
Running the updater, I received the following information:

inquiry: OnstreamTAPE TES
flash code version : W12V
Drive serial number : ^0~^^^0^P0 (where ^ denotes a symbol like a house with a peaked rook)
PRODUCTION TEST 2 SKIPPED, PLEASE RETURN TO ONSTREAM

I'm not sure how to proceed.
Steve

 

[gwootton]

If the firmware update shows that sort of identifier information, I would guess there is a problem with the indentifier chip within the drive, the firmware update can't see it because it's not reporting itself correctly to the computer...which is probably why nothing else works. I saw this maybe 3 times when I was working for onstream, we had to simply replace the drive.

Thanks,
Greg

 

[stevetabler]

I have had a certain amount of success, and have done a restore from one of my tapes.

That said, what I did was try different versions of the flash update, and found that the 4.13 flash seemed to ignore the message and go ahead and perform the update.

I was also having problems with Windows 2000 not seeing the drive, and Echo 3.2.99 was also not showing the drive so I could not assign a drive letter. I went into Windows device manager, did a re-install driver operation, was given a short list of drivers, I selected the DI-30 driver, and it became drive Z.

I was then able to restore from the first tape. I'm about to try a second tape.

Thanks,
Steve

 

[andrewcr]

How did this work out for you? I just received a similar drive and am having troubles. Please see thread181-27567.

Thanks,
Andy

 

[andrewcr]

Sorry, that should be thread532-776889.

Andy

 

[stevetabler]

don't have all of the details at hand for you, since its been awhile, and a lot of stuff is still packed away from a recent move. However, I was able to recover the contents of all but 1 of my tapes. The one I couldn't recover I think was an experiment to see how Microsoft's backup worked with the drive, so I don't think it had anything on it I didn't have anywhere.

I found that some of the versions of Onstream Echo, i.e. the newest versions, and versions from 1Vision wouldn't work with the DI30-VTC12. I remember trying various versions of the firmware until one of them "seemed" to work, but I only had success using MS/DOS-versions of the update firmware, and Ihad to dig trhough a lot of stuff on the Hastec site to find it....I think I came to the conclusion that I had little to lose, and just started trying different ones. I don't know if the firmware upgrade really did anything, or was needed.

Going against the install directions (which said that Echo had built-in drivers for the drive), and installing the drive using the Windows 2000 Professional add hardware facility and selecting one of the drivers did seem to work for me.

I think that initially, I was using a new tape to check-out if a configuration was going to work. Once the tape was reported as being blank, I would conclude I had a working configuration, and then attempt to read one of my tapes I was recovering from. Part of my problem was that I had tapes made with different versions of Echo, under different versions of Windows, and my tapes weren't labelled to tell me which they were made on. I don't have any experience using any Server versions of Windows.

 

[andrewcr]

Thanks for the Info. My vendor has agreed to replace the drive with a "standard" DI-30, so the issue is moot for me.

Thanks for your help anyway.

Andy