The original post: /r/homelab by /u/LaundryMan2008 on 2024-12-25 23:52:34.

I bought a fair few (4) tape drives for very cheap and fixed them very easily, they load/unload tapes perfectly fine after repairs with a head swap and some newly 3D printed cogs.

I bought them to try and fix, I also bought them so that I could learn about more modern server technology (only really messed with DLT and some ancient DEC Alpha stuff, now got to mess with SAS, FC and some modern tape server (most of them were a pain because they wanted a subscription and I’m not willing to pay any money for software and would prefer a free software that lets you use tape without locking it behind a paywall but for now I’m using Uranium backup and rolling back the computer every time the free trial ends) management software) and managed to get the drives working mechanically (only loading and unloading, no reading or writing because of the drives not showing up).

I read that I need to send a packet (\x02\x00\x36\XAC\x01\x00\x00\x00 \x01\xFF\xF2\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 \X00\X00\X00\X00\X00\X001X001100 \X00\ x00\x00\X00\x00\x001x001100 Nx00\X00\X00\x00\x001x001x001100 \X00\X00\X00\X00\X00\X001X001100 \X00\ x00\x00\X00\x00\x001x001100 \x00\ x00\xE6\x03) to the drive to tell it to turn standalone over LDI but I looked everywhere on how to do it, I have a RS-422 cable from the library caddies and I know it’s some type of serial bus but I am unsure on how to send a packet of data on windows 10, all of the stuff I am looking at was for Linux and I don’t mind instlling Linux to accomplish this (was going to mess with Linux at some point to make refurbishing old removable media much easier and to obtain factory only information that would only be visible to repair centers to determine chance of failure for a guaranteed service lifetime) but I would like to be able to send the packet of data in windows with a program, I saw some people using hackjob USB to RS-422 to accomplish this which I will create but my experience with every USB device on windows 10 was that windows would do all of the hard work configuring the device and you couldn’t do anything yourself.

Also doing this research, all of the good posts that had people that could help me were all locked and archived which meant I could not ask these people about that question without randomly DMing them or asking them that on their latest comment which might be irrelevant to the post that they replied to.

Thank you for helping out a fellow homelabber and I hope you enjoyed your Christmas :)