Quarter inch cartridge tape (abbreviated QIC, commonly pronounced "quick") is a magnetic tape data storage format introduced by 3M in 1972, with derivatives still in use as of 2016. QIC comes in a rugged enclosed package of aluminum and plastic that holds two tape reels driven by a single belt in direct contact with the tape. The tape was originally wide and anywhere from long. Data is written linearly along the length of the tape in one track including:
- QIC-11: a four-track format giving 20 MB on a 450 ft DC300XL cartridge
- QIC-24: nine-track, 45 MB or 60 MB on a 450 or 600 ft DC600A cartridge, respectively
- QIC-120: 15-track, 125 MB, DC6150 cartridge
- QIC-525: 26-track, 525 MB on a 1020 ft DC6525 cartridge
- QIC-1350: 30-track, 1.35 GB on a DC9135 cartridge
Other QIC DC standards include the QIC-02 and QIC-36 drive interface standards. Later QIC DC drives usually use the QIC-104/111 SCSI and QIC-121 SCSI-2 interfaces.
Other Data Cartridge (DC) look-alikes:
- 3M DC600HC, a preformatted tape with 16 tracks on 600 foot DC600A and software-based EOT/BOT detection. HP used these in the HP914x type of cartridge drives.
QIC Mini Cartridge (MC)
Later, the smaller Minicartridge (MC) form-factor was introduced. This is by size and is small enough to fit in a drive bay.
- QIC-40
- 20-track DC2000 mini-cartridge 205 ft. 40 MB
- 20-track DC2000XL mini-cartridge 307½ ft. 60 MB
- 28-track DC2120 mini-cartridge 307½ ft. 120 MB
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto;"
!Format
!Capacity (MB)
!Speed (kB/s)
!Tracks
|-
|QIC-80
|80-500
|62.5
|28/36
|-
|TR-1
|400
|62.5
|36
|-
|TR-1EX
|500
|62.5
|36
|-
|QIC-3010
|340
|62.5
|40/50
|-
|TR-2
|800
|62.5
|50
|-
|QIC-3020
|670
|62.5
|40/50
|-
|TR-3
|1,600
|125
|50
|-
|TR-3EX
|2,200
|125
|50
|-
|QIC-3080
|1,200-1,600
|125
|60/72
|-
|TR-4
|4,000
|1024
|72
|-
|QIC-3095
|4,000
|1024
|72
|-
|TR-5
|10,000
|1024
|108
|}
SLR
SLR is Tandberg Data's name for its line of high-capacity QIC data cartridge drives. As of 2005, Tandberg was the only manufacturer of SLR/QIC drives in the world. The largest SLR drive can hold 70 GB of data (140 GB compressed).
QIC-Wide
A variant from Sony using a wider .315 inch (8 mm) tape and increases the recording density. QIC-Wide drives are backwards compatible with QIC tapes.
QIC-EX
QIC Extra, a modification to support longer tapes and thus more data by the Verbatim Corporation, was made possible by making the cartridges physically longer to accommodate larger spools. In many cases a standard QIC drive and backup package can use the extended length to store additional data, however in some cases an attempt to reformat a QIC-EX cartridge fails since the time taken to traverse the extra length triggers a timeout in the drive or controlling software intended to detect a broken tape.
Computer interfaces
QIC-02
QIC-02 ("1/4 inch Cartridge Tape Drive Intelligent Interface Standard") defines a standard interface for 1/4in cartridges, with 8-bit+1 parity bidirectional data channel with control signals on a 50-pin connector, as well as a standard command interface between the host and tape drive.
QIC-117
QIC-117 ("Command Set Interface Specification for Flexible Disk Controller Based Mini Data Cartridge Tape Drives") defines a method of using the Floppy disk controller in an IBM PC to control tape drives. QIC-117 borrows the Index, Track Zero, and Step lines on the controller to send commands and retrieve responses from the drive. The QIC-40 and QIC-80 cartridges were designed to take advantage of existing MFM or RLL encoding and decoding logic.
QIC-157
An interface standard for tape drives using the ATAPI (IDE) and SCSI interfaces.
See also
- Apple Tape Backup 40SC
- Colorado Memory Systems, a company dedicated to QIC, later acquired by Hewlett-Packard