Is it possible to use a pc as a dat drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter BeastraEatsAll
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BeastraEatsAll

Era Escape
I have a fostex d80 that was made before the days when computers were seen as useful musical tools. It has an optical in and out for mixing down to a DAT drive, but not much else in terms of options for backing up data. Are there convertors or software that would let me use the optical ports to back up data onto a computer? Or is this just unheard of? What kind of stuff would I need?
 
You just need a soundcard/interface that has matching digital input/outputs. All DATs did was record digitally....which is what your computer will do.
 
You need a sound card like the emu 1212m and a software sequencer there are many flavors of them from cheap to not so cheap. I use cubase and I think a version of it comes with the 1212m.


Good Luck
Will
 
So I need a whole new soundcard? Is there anything I could use to convert optical to SCSI or something that's already on my computer?
 
Would it be less of a hassle just to get a used dat drive then bother with installing a sound card? My computer is 5 years old and I'm not that computer savvy.
 
BeastraEatsAll said:
So I need a whole new soundcard? Is there anything I could use to convert optical to SCSI or something that's already on my computer?
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There is not anything that I know of that will do what you want cheaply or at least I haven't seen it.
 
BeastraEatsAll said:
Would it be less of a hassle just to get a used dat drive then bother with installing a sound card? My computer is 5 years old and I'm not that computer savvy.
Click to expand...

Either option would work but I think the sound card way would be cheaper and more effective.
 
This sounds weird, but I just thought of this: could I back up a d80 hard drive by hooking the hard drive directly to a computer and copying its contents onto another hard drive?
 
How old is your computer? A lot of motherboards now adays come with built in optical and/or s'pdif. If not, there should be some under $100 soundcards that will get you what you need.
 
it's about 5 years old. What sound cards are out there that have the optical connections?
 
Would this work as a convertor, or are the optical connections on my D80 different than what they're talking about here?
 
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The manual for the d80 is located here under the "d80" link so you know what I'm talking about.
 
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