On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 9:56:01 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2017 02:08:25 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

I recall seeing some years ago an interface for hooking old mainframe reel to reel data tape drives to a PC.
There were SCSI connected drives for 9 track tape but most used
differential SCSI. You could get a differential SCSI card but it was
unusual. They were really aimed at AS/400s. The other issue was
software to support them. IBM did make a PS/2 machine that ran DOS VSE
tho. That had a 360/370 interface card that would run almost anything
that would run on a mainframe.
I bet there are less than a dozen of them running today.


I once had an original IBM PC with green screen monitor in my collection that had a "five" megabyte MFM hard drive that I picked up at a Ham Fest. I removed one of the 5.25 inch floppy drives to install the hard drive. I think I had a few PS/2 machines at one time. I also had an original potable Lunchbox Compaq PC. Me and my brother rescued a lot of old machines like those.. At home I have a several older Dell Precision desktops that are solid chunks of metal. The damn things weigh upwards of 60lbs each but they will run all day long 24/7. It's so easy to change hard drives in them. I like the business PC's like those because they're easy to work on. I kind of miss the good old days when computers weren't so user friendly because it was more fun to figure them out. ヽ(ヅ)ノ

[8~{} Uncle PC Monster