The author shares their story of trying to recover priceless data from a tape containing the final source code for Frogger 2: Swampy’s Revenge. They explain that the tape was written using OnStream technology, which had a dedicated data processing chip and custom hardware, making it difficult to read the data without a compatible tape drive. The author went through multiple attempts, including sending the tape to a professional data recovery company, which proved unsuccessful. Eventually, they reverse engineered the drive, tricked the drive sensors, and were able to recover the data themselves. The author also highlights issues with ARCserve, the software used to write the data, which was broken and not capable of reading OnStream tapes. The author hopes to share their experience and technical details to help others recover data in similar situations.
https://github.com/Kneesnap/onstream-data-recovery/blob/main/info/INTRO.MD