Syquest EZ135 tape drive

I have 3 Syquest EZ135 tapes with jpg's on them that I'd like to get onto CD's, or DVD's as possible...The original drive was given away by mistake in our old W98 computer tower....I got 5 of the Syquest EZ135 "internal" tape units off of ebay for shipping but have been unable to get any of them to work with W2K computers which I have on hand...XP refuses to talk to them, and drivers I've d/l'd specifically say they're not for anything above 98SE....One of the drives lights the ID light orange but it never goes to any other color, and I can't hear any of the drives light up when I plug them in...Can I assume they're all boffo or could it be the OS? As soon as I can find someone who has a 95 or 98 Windows installation set I'll clean one of these W2K and reload the older OS to see if that works.....Anyone have ideas, or a better option for retreiving these family pictures?....Thanks in advaance...