formatted Pertec interface for mag tape

Hello,

I have developed a need to read some archival mag tapes on a newer computer system. I had a SCSI - Pertec adapter off a scrapped Cipher tape drive, and hooked it up to my CDC keystone drive, and it appeared to be working for a while. Then, the adapter stopped passing its built-in self test. It was most likely SCSI-I anyway, so might not have worked well with an Adaptec interface and Linux.

So, does anyone know a reasonable way to hook a streaming

9-track drive with Pertec formatted interface to a computer? I'm not terribly concerned with speed, and don't need to write, only read.

I can probably hack up my own software, so I don't need it to interface to any file system, either.

These tapes are mostly going to be ANSI-D, but some might be in VMS backup format.

I figure I could whip up an FPGA to handle the Pertec interface, I've never done it, but I think it is pretty straightforward.

Thanks for any ideas,

Jon