This just in: I freaking hate MicroSoft.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been trying to recover data from old DDS tape backups my family made on assorted Windows systems between 1998-2001 for a while now.
The first hurdle was getting the necessary and correct tape drive and SCSI controller card. Then it was getting the right prehistoric operating systems and assembling a rig old enough to run them properly (no small task in these parts, took quite a while to get a functioning circa-1999 rig). After that it was rotating the operating systems on the rig because it turns out that the OSs each used different parameters for the same process, so it can’t just be one for them all. Then it was discovering that the errors i was seeing was because the tape drive I had essentially croaked and was failing, and had to be replaced; the replacement arrived on Friday. Now the target OS (Win98) recognizes the tape drive properly, but the backup software doesn’t no matter what I do.

I just can’t catch a break with the damn thing..