Re:

> We have an old HP7978 tape drive that has served us well for years.  When
> Is there any software available that will allow me to read and write files
> to this tape drive via a PC?

Probably yes...but you're probably not going to be interested in
using such software.  (E.g., I suspect you could find software to do
data logging to an 7978...but doubt that you're doing data logging!)

What about as a backup device?  Nope...I strongly suspect you won't find
any backup software on a PC that knows how to talk to an HP-IB tape
drive...and even if you did, you wouldn't want to backup a PC to an
HP-IB reel tape!  You can get high-capacity "modern" tape drives for a PC
for low cost that would work better in most respects.

Now, if your question is one of "how can we access our old reel tape data
in the unlikely event we'll need it" ... that's different.  I'd suggest
buying a used HP 3000/917 with an HP-IB card, and keep it around for
accessing the HP 7978.

BTW, if I realllly wanted to access arbitrary reel tape data on a PC,
I'd look first at booting into Linux.  Then you could use a variety of
tools that understand tapes better (like "dd").
But...although some HP-IB drivers exist for x86 Linux, I'm not sure how
easy they are to setup.

Stan Sieler                                           [log in to unmask]
www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html          www.allegro.com/sieler