[ARSCLIST] DDS drive for AUDIO DAT (was 12 bit non-linear DAT and Sony LP mode

[Jeffrey Kane <jeffkane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just finished sticking an audio capable DDS-2 drive in the computer.
Worked right out of the box; it couldn'tve been easier. XP recognized the
card and drive, loaded all the drivers and off I went. I'm using an Adaptec
29160 SCSI card I had laying around. It's overkill for this application. I
also tried a cheap low end AVA-2906 card I had in the spares bin. The 29160
responds much faster but otherwise the 2906 worked identically. Both have
drivers built into XP and need no configuration.

VDAT is flaky enough that I wouldn't use it were it free, much less pay for
it. DAT2WAV works wonderfully. Playing, writing to tape, etc... haven't
tried an LP tape yet but will tomorrow.

Incidentally the drive is a Scorpion ST224000N which isn't on the
audio-capable 'list'. It apparently has been flashed with Archive Python
firmware (description reads : ARCHIVE  Python 04106-XXX 743B). This drive
reads audio at 2x. The SDT-9000 Sony drive reads at 4x, so if you can find
one cheaply, that's the one to have.

I plan to see if I can come up with another one of these drives and try
flashing it as well as a non-audio SDT-9000 to see how difficult the process
is. The drives are cheap and *very* plentiful. Hopefully the SDT-9000 is
easy to modify as it's most readily available and most importantly can still
be had new. Perhaps I'm not being rational; physical data storage is the one
area I don't trust refurbished equipment.

Jeff