[comp.sys.hp] 9000/550 & 35401A CS80 tape autochanger

accu@hpuepta.UUCP (Accugraph Corp) (10/27/89)

We have a requirement in our production department to make tapes on our
35401A from a 9144A or 7946.  Several problems have come to my attention
in the support of the autochanger (35401A, which is a disguised 9144 with
a mechanical tape changer built around it). 

The scenario is:

A) We would like to use it on a 9000/550 (which was lying in a closet,
gathering dust).  We have about 20 9000/300s' of various flavors at this site
but they all are being used for other purposes (development, training, &c).

B) We want to make copies, eight at a time, of software releases, tape2tape,
which are in all of the following formats: tcio, tar, LIF.  Some of our
customers run BASIC, PASCAL and HP1000 systems so we cannot just use tcio,
to my knowledge.

C) We were making "pushbutton" copies of HP-UX and our software using a 7946,
but 6.5 will not pushbutton copy (> 55MB) and we do not have a spare 7914.
We, of course, have bought a right-to-copy license for HP-UX.

The problems are as follows:

1) The 550 does not support selective mode on the 35401A.  The 300s' only
support selective mode with tcio (PIX located some ioctl mumbo jumbo in
<sys/cs80.h> for me on the 300s' (which is disclaimed "undocumented")).  I
very much doubt the 550 device driver supports these (CIOC_UNLOAD, CIOC_LOAD,
&c).  We are running HP-UX 5.1 on the 550 and I have a 5.2 tape.

2) I have a CS80 Instruction Set manual (PN 5955-3442) which our local SE
lent me, printed APR 1983,  but I cannot find an example of how to use
these codes in a C program or indeed how to send them to the 35401A.
Ideally, I would want a program or script which would prompt for the number
of tapes to be copied and it would issue the CS80 command to load each tape
and then issue the tar, tcio or LIF command, as appropriate.

3) I do not know what the best way to copy the tapes is.  Will dd(1) do the
trick?  If so which parameters would be best to use for speed.  If not, what
is the fastest way to copy HP-UX, LIF and tar format tapes?

4) Can we use tcio to copy HP-UX 6.5 and HP-UX 7.0 tapes.  If not, what is
the most efficient way.

5) We really would like to use our 550, and not as a boat anchor. (-:

Any help is much appreciated, particularly a programming example of loading
and unloading the 35401 in selective mode.

Phil Webster
Accugraph Corporation

uucp: hplabs!hpuepta!acgrph!pw

P.S. PIX and my local SE have been most helpful, they just don't have the
information I want.