Last update 13/03/2003
SONY SDT-9000 SGI Audio firmware

A bit of history.

Reading and writing audio data from a SCSI DAT drive requires that the drive have special firmware. A normal DAT/DDS drive that is used for data backup does not have this firmware and cannot read/write audio data. For information on which DAT drives can do audio, keep reading.
Note: This chronology is a distillation of information that I have heard/read over the years and may not be entirely accurate. If you know different, let me know.

Years ago, Silicon Graphics (SGI) decided that being able to read and write Digital Audio Tapes (DAT) was a neat idea, the ARDAT company and SGI (Silicon Graphics, Inc.) got together and developed firmware with special commands to allow a data-only SCSI DAT drive to read and write audio data, just like an audio DAT deck. ARDAT was later bought by the Archive company, which sold the DDS-1 4320 model with the audio firmware. The 4320 firmware was contained in a ROM chip that had to be swapped out. A later model, the CTD-8000 was a DDS-2 capable drive and had flash-upgradable firmware. Archive was later bought by Conner Peripherals and later by Seagate, who continued to sell the 4326 as the CTD-8000 (see Jos Heemskerk site to upgrade your Conner/Seagate drive to audio) . In 1998 SGI for their new DDS-3 drive swapped from Seagate to Sony as drive manufacturer. The SDT-9000 with audio firmware was born. I understand that the Sony drive uses a superset of the Seagate audio commands, so it should be backwards compatible.
As i know, the newest Sony SGI DDS-4 firmware do not contain audio firmware.
As far as we know the only companies that have ever released audio capable DAT drives are Archive/Conner/Seagate and Sony. Also these companies have released a lot of different drives that cannot read/write audio. HP never released audio firmware. As some of you know, the SGI drives are very hard to find and very expensive.

The SDT-9000 data-only drives are EXACTLY the same as the audio-capable drives, except for the different firmware.
If you contact Sony about obtaining/purchasing audio firmware, they will tell you that the audio firmware is not available from them and that you should contact SGI (if they admit to knowing anything about audio capability, that is). SGI swears that they do not own firmware.
Here is how my quest to obtain the audio firmware started in 2000 and i must say it was the most hardest firmware to obtain in my long firmware history :)
After some internet search, i put my hands on a DOS flash utility able to flash the drive with every firmware (modify a Compaq drive -> Sony -> Compaq or any other OEM). The problem was still to find the SGI firmware.
Hoppefully the light came from a guy who dumped the SGI 12.2 firmware with an eprom reader. Badly the file was decrypted when the flash utility need an encrypted firmware. I contacted one of the best DVD firmware patcher called Dean who made me in 2 days a very nice firmware encrypter/decrypter tool.
For the little history, i bought a drive on ebay to test the firmware and received an SGI drive with firmware 13.1!!! You can imagine i didn't flashed the drive :).
And here we are, the SGI audio firmware is finally here. Enjoy playing/recording DAT audio tape on your computer!!!

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There are risks attached to flashing firmware. Flashing the firmware improperly or flashing to a drive that is not suited can render it useless.
Important note!! When using the DOS flash utility, we recommand you to disconnect every SCSI devices (excepted the Sony 9000) before flashing to avoid any possible problem.

Once the update is successful you can test your drive with the VDAT or DAT2WAV programs.

Here playing a DAT audio on VDAT

If you want more information on using Audio DATs in DDS drives look at Ade Rixons’s, Joseph Gray’s site and DAT2WAV FAQ.

If you have questions, problems or success, new firmware, use the Firmware Page DAT forum.