Info from a Travan 5 tape?

When I left one of my jobs (not at all on good terms with the boss, who was a pen cup-throwing, glass breaking, screaming yelling maniac, but I digress..), I was given a Seagate Travan 5 tape (the back-up tape) with the formats of the work I had done on it. I had no idea then how much hassle it would be to try to get the info off of it.

I did not have a tape drive. I was told that it has to be an indentical system in order to get the info off of the tape. So I bought a Travan drive on Ebay at a good price and installed it. Then I was told my computer had to be networked in the same way, same version of Windows, all the same programs installed on my computer as he had on his, etc etc. Months later, I still do not have the info. I can't go back and try to get it in a more accessable form because they guy was enraged when I left and apparently has sworn to never speak to me again. What a loss.. ;-)

At this point, I am sick of buying equipment and software to get the info off of one tape, and just want to know if there is any way someone else can pull just the Word Documents off of it. Can it be done, or would they have the same compatability problems? I have never had nor dealt with tape drives on any of my computers. It would take me literally years to rebuild those formats. A lot of work is on that tape.

Thanks for any words of wisdom!

Dee