Quick QIC question

[Jack Fowble]

The bottom line question first:
   If I write on a DC600A cartridge using vendor A's stated 60MB
   drive unit and adapter, what's the likelihood that I can get
   an intelligible(?) byte stream into my 4D70GT (with the Cipher 540S
   60 MB unit), say using 'dd'?  (I'd expect we'd have to play with
   byte ordering, data formats, etc.; but would we get past blatant
   low level I/O errors/incompatabilities?)

More specificly, Archive has a PC tape unit they call Fastape (60MB)
(not the Viper 150) that uses DC600A.  Users would like to pull spectra
and image data sets from those tapes to the SGI.

More generally:
   Haven't had a good go-round about tape formats and "standards" since
   last May on this list ;-), at which time I shrugged and thought how
   lucky I was not to have to think about such madness!  Sigh. :-(

   Looking around here, I find QIC-24 units (seem to do 60MB), QIC-02
   units that are also described as QIC-24 (signal interface versus
   data format???), QIC-150 (150MB) that are also described as QIC-02.
   The archives of this list also introduced QIC-120 & QIC-11 "standards"
   (whatever MB).  The Fastape unit mentioned above was suggested to me
   to be of a QIC-36 persuasion.  Catalogs indicate QIC-40, -60, -80,
   and -100 that seem to cross back and forth between standard and mini
   cartridges.

   So, WHO writes all these "standards"?  Where are such "standards"
   documented?  Anybody already sort all of this out, maybe have some
   sort of a master reference list?  Or does one call in a QIC con$ultant?
   (As an aside, I even noted a mail order ad describing a flavor
   of mini cartridge (DC2000) adhering to the "QIC-2000" standard.
   Oh, come ON now...)

In the QIC-sand,
   Jack