[rescue] Playing and Recording music on DAT tapes

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Dave McGuire says ...
>
>    I too have a DA-30, and I fought with this as well.  I didn't get
> very far with it...some DAT drives will deal with audio and some won't.
>   I found a web page somewhere (I don't recall where...google is your
> friend) that detailed which drives work and which ones didn't, and even
> had firmware and download utilities for some models of drives.

I found that page, thanks.

The DDS drive I have is an Archive Python 4320.  It came to me in an
Indigo^2, and has an SGI-looking "option drive" sticker on it.  I don't
think they address this model on that page; the drive's DDS-1, and probably
too old for them to have considered it.  However, since it came in an SGI
machine, I figure it might have a chance.  I'll slap it on a sled and give
it a try.

>    I'd gotten pissed off by the time I had a stack of five DAT drives
> that didn't work right...some hung the SCSI bus, some ate tapes, etc.
> Eventually I wound up connecting a piece of RCA-RCA coax between the
> DA-30's digital output and the digital input on my Octane and sucking
> them in (and doing some editing) that way.  It was pretty trivial to do
> it that way and I kicked myself for not having taken that approach
> earlier in the process.

Yeah, there's always that, or at least the A-A-D version of it.  The tapes I
have are 1/4" audio, so I could just play the tapes on a 1/4" deck and take
the line-out signal right to a WAV-file-maker of some sort.  My original
thought was that my friend Mike could do a little clean-up with his studio
gear before the stuff hit digital, and make DATs tapes to send to me so I
could make CDs.  I could just cut him out of the deal, since the clean-up
probably won't be neccessary.  These are mostly dubs of studio masters, so
they should be clean.

>    If memory serves, the Indigo2 has digital audio I/O, but on a 1/8"
> connector instead of the more standard RCA jacks.  I've never used that
> interface, though, and I don't know how well it works on that hardware.
>
>   But with Octanes being so unbelievably cheap right now, I might
> suggest it'd be better for you to grab one on eBay, move all your stuff
> over from your Indigo2 and give it away, and suck the data in from the
> DA-30 like I did.

Well, the DA-30 is in Atlanta, and I'm in Seattle, but I get the idea.  I
was going to send the 1/4" audio tapes to Atlanta, have them made into DATs,
the DATs sent to me, and I'd make CDs.  However, it looks like the simpler
path is for me to get one of my lent-out 1/4" audio decks back and do
deck->computer->CD myself.

Thanks.

-Shel