DAT Audio on DDS Drives



Every DAT-Head has wondered if those ubiquitous DDS drives that you can get for a song these days, that use the same tapes as our high-dollar DAT machines, will work interchangebly. The answer is: Maybe!

The computer company, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) is no stranger to the audio world. Their workstations are designed with lots of multimedia in mind. It is, in fact, because of SGI that we have audio capable CD-ROM's in our computers and, by extension, CD Burners. SGI thought, "Hey, if it uses the same media, it ought to be interchangable." They contracted Seagate to build firmware into their "Archive" line of DDS drives that could read and write DAT tapes with the Audio format. Unfortunately, DAT never took off like CD's and so the DAT world remains a kind of fringe cult of dedicated musical enthusiests and while DDS manufacturers have adopted DDS-1,2,3, and now DDS-4 (20 GB of raw capacity), they've left Audio behind. Fortunately for us, there are still a lot of Audio capable drives around and much cheaper than dedicated "Audio" DAT equipment. It is even possible that you can find a cheap drive and "Flash" it with the SGI firmware. Unfortunately, people using this mode are a fringe cult of the fringe cult.

Here is my collection of tools grabbed from the internet and other kind souls that have provided me with valuable information and software (firmware images are in the "fup" directory). 

      Name                    Last modified       Size  Description


[DIR] Parent Directory        31-May-2000 07:54      -  
[DIR] datlib/                 31-May-2000 07:55      -  Linux/Solaris package to read/write DAT audio on DDS drives
[DIR] fup/                    31-May-2000 07:56      -  Seagate's Flash Upgrade utility for Archive/Conner DDS Drives
[] wdat_0.02.tar.gz        11-Oct-2002 07:56      -  My own attempt at a DAT read/write program for linux
[] datscsi3.pdf            31-May-2000 07:56      -  Seagate's DDS drive SCSI manual for Archive/Conner DDS Drives
Here are some links to other information:


If you have any other information that is linkable, contact wayne@hoxnet.com for inclusion.
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