I have an old Travan-3 backup tape written in QIC format with MS Backup. It is a 3 GB cassette that I used to use with my HP Colorado tape drive via a floppy drive interface. I still have the drive, but unfortunately, Windows XP will not recognize it, nor are any drivers available for it, except for Win98. There are a number of things on it I’d like to be able to recover, but it’s nothing mission critical. Does anyone have a compatible QIC tape drive running under Win98 and the capability to burn the contents to either DVD or multiple CD-Rs, or the willingness to temporarily install my tape drive in their Win98 box to make the copy? If so, please either post here or email me.
This may not be much help, or may be more effort than you’re willing to go through, but have you considered a Linux live-cd? Just download knoppix or ubuntu, burn, and reboot into linux. From this and this, it looks like Colorado drives are supported under Linux.
Oh…on rereading the OP, I see you need MSBackup. Well, that makes it a bit harder, but googling on “linux msbackup” reveals that MSBackup is at least somewhat supported.
Hope that’s an idea you hadn’t thought of and that it helps…
On driverguide.com (use “drivers” & “all” for log in & PW)
There’s driver set for NT4 that might work with XP (guessing).
It is, indeed! Actually, even if it doesn’t work (I’ll give it a try if astro’s drivers don’t work properly), it gives me another idea: if someone can make a bootable minimal Windows 98 CD with MS Backup support, and the necessary drivers for the tape drive I ought to be able to get it going that way, too. Thanks to both of you. I’ll let you know how I make out.
Well, that didn’t work out so well. I got Knoppix downloaded and burned to CD ok, and it boots fine, but when it tries to load the GUI, the video goes all screwy. In all likelihood, I’m doing something wrong, since I’m a complete Linux noob. Little help?
Aiyah. I think we might have to get into what your setup is and such, and there’s still no guarantees it’ll work. I hate to say this, but you might want to see if Ubuntu works better.
I wish I had more knowledge of the ins and outs of the live-cd setups, but they’ve just worked on every computer I’ve tried them on. I realize that this is definitely more than you bargained for, but can you work from the command line?
Downloading that now. Let you know in about a half hour.
Ubuntu worked much better; it booted to the GUI fine, but it turned off my mouse’s PS/2 port for some reason. At least we’re getting there.
Interesting. To some degree, I’m surprised that Knoppix couldn’t handle your system properly. Score one for Ubuntu.
I’m a Debian user (which is the foundation for Ubuntu); I’m not sure if this is the same problem, but I had to do the following to get the mouse to work on one system:
modprobe mousedev
modprobe psmouse
This will create the mouse device and load the generic mouse driver. Don’t know why it didn’t just set it up the way it did on other systems. Since you’re using a livecd, you have to do this after startup; otherwise, you could just add those lines to the /etc/modules file.
I’m sorry, I’m not usually prone to seventh grade humor, but the combination of user name and word usage was just too much…
I really wish I could add something intelligent to offset this, but I got nothin’
To be honest, the double entendre is one of the reasons I chose the name. 
Hoo-boy, are my digits getting tired…
As an idea if nothing else works you could detach the other drives and attach a spare, unused FAT partitioned drive (assuming you’ve got one hanging around) install win98 and get the transfer done. If you need a WIN98 OS disk or a small HD to use email me.
It would take an hour to install WIn98 but it sounds like you’re spending more time than that on the alternatives.
Q.E.D and astro, please don’t ask for someone to send, or offer to send, licensed software. You’re welcome to continue talking about the methods used to get the job done, but we don’t want licensed software exchanges on the SDMB.
Not a clue. If it helps, it did the exact same thing with Ubuntu. I assumed it was something to do with drivers. It’s an optical PS/2 mouse, if that makes any difference.
And Skipster, relax. I have about as much interest in pirating Windows 98 as I do in acquiring a hundred pounds of cow patties.
But, point taken.
Interesting. The one I was using was also an optical PS/2 mouse. Did the modprobe lines I gave above help?
I don’t know yet. Once I’m in the GUI (with no mouse, remember?), how do I go about entering them? I assume there’s some way to get to a command prompt, similar to Windows’ command.com? Or is there a Linux version of F8 on boot to show a boot options menu?
Ah. Of course. The command line generally gets heavy use by Linux users. (I’d go into the joys of bash or other UNIX shells vs. command.com right now, but that’s beyond the call.) Ordinarily, when using a GUI, you simply open a terminal (such as xterm, gnome-terminal, etc.). Since you’d have to use keyboard shortcuts that I don’t remember off the top of my head, here’s another way: use a “virtual terminal”.
Linux is inherently a multi-user system; you can run multiple logins at one time. If you hit “ctrl+alt+F1” (or any other “F” key, generally up to F6 unless you configure it otherwise), you will get a text login screen (on terminal “tty1”, or tty-whatever F key you hit). Either login as yourself and use the “su” command to become root, or just login as root (add disclaimer about the dangers of logging in as root user here). Type the modprobe commands. To get back to the GUI, hit “ctrl+alt+F7”. You should make sure you eventually log out of the virtual terminal (particularly if you become root!), although this needn’t be done to switch back and forth.
FYI – since the GUI is not an integral part of Linux, you can kill the XServer if need be by hitting “ctrl+alt+backspace”. (Not that that’s relevant here, but it’s nice to know if your graphics system is behaving badly; then you don’t have to reboot.)