I have a 4mm dat tape that was recorded in 96 on a SUN workstation. The tape was new and was written to once (TAR). It has been in a file cabinet the whole time and appears new.

It contains most of the contents of my home folder at that time.

Id like to pull the files from it but no longer have the equipment.

Searching the web I find any number of services for tape recovery and media conversion, but most seem to be oriented to disaster recovery of badly abused media and typically seem to charge more than a tape drive would likely cost.

Any one have a pointer to a reasonable media conversion service provider?

I'm not looking for any effort beyond what would be typical reading of the tape.

ebay: DAT drive.... about $30
SCSI card.... $20
linux boot CD will probably autodetect them

This bears thinking on. It's truly a workable option, yet I'm reluctant, as I've no foreseeable use for such hardware beyond reading this one tape.

Ask around on craigslist or something to see if anybody nearby can help you?

Isn't that what he is doing? ;-)

ebay is for buying *and* selling (and if you, like me, have never actually bothered selling anything then here's an opportunity). You could even make a few $

Selling stuff on eBay is a PITA. It is heavily biased towards the buyer.

I think I've got a DAT drive attached to my old SS10 somewhere... The only problem is that I've not actually used it in over 10 years so the belts or whatever rubber items in there are probably nasty by now.

There were quite a few drives on ebay, most unbid on, so the resale ops seem limited.

I did try scoping the 2nd time store at work. (it's a tent adjacent to my workplace's salvage yard, open on Thursdays, yet not last Thursday for some reason. Anything in it can be reemployed simply for the taking. Actually Tdays are only when recently discarded items are set out.)