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Digital Audio Tape usage in IRIX? - Printable Version

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Digital Audio Tape usage in IRIX? - Tech_and_Music - 08-12-2020

Something that has had my interest for a while is the usage of DDS Tape Drives for Digital Audio Tape playback and recording. I've messed with this on Windows, but I know the firmware for the supported DDS drives originally came from Silicon Graphics machines.

Apparently, SGI added support for DAT, as a way of making life a little easier for those using their machines for mixing and mastering audio recordings, as often the final recording would have to be put on a DAT tape, which would be sent to the CD production plant. With this, it wouldn't require an external deck, the workstation itself could take care of it.

I've always found the SGI side of that interesting, and wondered what software supports DAT usage. Reading up some,  it looks like IRIX has a library for it, libdataudio, and that audio tapes will show up on the desktop as an audio icon.

However, does IRIX itself allow you to playback or even record to tape, or is custom software utilizing the library required? If so, does anyone know the right software to use for this? I'd love to try out playing from and recording to digital audio tapes on an IRIX machine when I finally obtain one of my own.

RE: Digital Audio Tape usage in IRIX? - hamei - 08-12-2020

(08-12-2020, 03:08 PM)Tech_and_Music Wrote:  However, does IRIX itself allow you to playback or even record to tape, or is custom software utilizing the library required? If so, does anyone know the right software to use for this? I'd love to try out playing from and recording to digital audio tapes on an IRIX machine when I finally obtain one of my own.

This is from back when I had an overboosted Indigo Elan (and next to it a new Z-Pro with two, count 'em two ! overclocked Pentium Pro's) so ... brainfade may be involved. But pretty sure all the Irix media desktop tools worked fine with the dat audio drive. In fact, I bought a walkdat D7 which is in a drawer here somewhere just for that purpose. Batteries are probably dead now though.

Plus there was a whole ftp site dedicated to dat audio on Irix. Might even be saved here, ask Raion.

RE: Digital Audio Tape usage in IRIX? - jan-jaap - 08-12-2020

(08-12-2020, 04:18 PM)hamei Wrote:  I bought a walkdat D7 which is in a drawer here somewhere just for that purpose.

Most people bought them to bootleg rock concerts Cool Those things were the bomb.

RE: Digital Audio Tape usage in IRIX? - Tech_and_Music - 08-12-2020

Thanks, good to know IRIX has tools available for it! I'll hopefully have some fun with it in the future!

RE: Digital Audio Tape usage in IRIX? - indigofan - 08-14-2020

I have over 300+ hours of audio recorded on DAT from my old Indigo. Works like a charm. Restored a bunch of it last week.

RE: Digital Audio Tape usage in IRIX? - jwhat - 09-03-2020

Hi Tech&Music,

the SGI "DatMan" utility plays DAT Audio tape, but only with the DAT Drives that have SGI Firmware.

I think there are a few versions of this:
1. For Connor Archive (DAT/DDS-2)
2. Different versions of Sony ST-9000 Series (DAT/DDS-3)

I have a Sony DAT version with SGI Firmware that I flashed many moons ago.
Here is the SCSI info record I found on my Octane for this:

>> /dev/scsi/sc1d1l0: Tape SONY SDT-9000 13.1
>> ANSI vers 2, ISO ver: 0, ECMA ver: 0; supports: synch
>> Device is not ready


I have just done a search for the firmware and the flash utility, but could not find it...

EDIT: Found Sony Tape Firmware Utility 1.1 for Windows and SDT9000_122_audio.zip which has Firmware 12.2 and dos based flashing tool but no luck finding 13.1 Firmware

I will look further as having this available generally will be helpful to others looking to use DAT Drives.

Cheers from Oz,


John.