[comp.sys.nsc.32k] 1/4" SCSI Tape Drives from CSC

phil@Shiva.COM (Phil Budne) (03/05/91)

I just got the latest CSC (Corporate Systems Center -- where our
Miniscibes came from) flyer which has an 115MB Archive 2060S quarter
inch SCSI tape drive for $295 qty 1, $249 qty 5 and $219 qty 10.
While I hate QIC as much as the next guy (maybe more) 115MB is much
more reasonable than the usual 60MB, and I would consider buying one..

They also have the usual selection of disks, and a 286 GRID laptop for
$1295

-Phil

bdale@col.hp.com (Bdale Garbee) (03/06/91)

> I just got the latest CSC (Corporate Systems Center -- where our
> Miniscibes came from) flyer which has an 115MB Archive 2060S quarter
> inch SCSI tape drive for $295 qty 1, $249 qty 5 and $219 qty 10.
> While I hate QIC as much as the next guy (maybe more) 115MB is much
> more reasonable than the usual 60MB, and I would consider buying one..

Does it eat standard DC-600 tapes, or something else, or standard and/or
something else?  Anyone know?  If it can make use of the *big* box of DC600
tapes I've accumulated over the years...

Bdale

Mark_Geisert@l66a.ladc.bull.com (Mark Geisert) (03/06/91)

I would also join a group buy for Archive 2060S SCSI tape drives.
I'd want one.  I assume that Minix532 would support it, of course.
 
..mark  (Mark_Geisert@L66A.LADC.Bull.COM)

xrolfa@dna.lth.se (Rolf Andersson) (03/06/91)

I would also be happy to join a group by of one of those Tape drives.

HH
Rolf

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eyal@echo.canberra.edu.au (Eyal Lebedinsky) (03/06/91)

> 
> I just got the latest CSC (Corporate Systems Center -- where our
> Miniscibes came from) flyer which has an 115MB Archive 2060S quarter
> inch SCSI tape drive for $295 qty 1, $249 qty 5 and $219 qty 10.
> While I hate QIC as much as the next guy (maybe more) 115MB is much
> more reasonable than the usual 60MB, and I would consider buying one..
> 
I would consider a tape backup absolutely essential. At the moment I can
loose the whole big disk and have nothing to show for it.

I will join a group buy if someone (States side) is willing to organize...

> 
> -Phil
> 


-- 
Regards
	Eyal

phil@cs.wwu.edu (Phil Nelson) (03/06/91)

>From Mark_Geisert@L66A.LADC.Bull.COM:
   I would also join a group buy for Archive 2060S SCSI tape drives.
   I'd want one.  I assume that Minix532 would support it, of course.

Well, minix does not support it yet.  I just bought my 60mb tape a
month too soon...  I was looking at the mods needed to get minix to
support a tape drive.  Has anyone else started looking at this job?

So far, here is a small list of changes I think are needed for minix
to suppport the tape drives in a "usual" way:
   a) Add tape scsi commands to the scsi driver. (kernel)
   b) Add knowledge of tapes to fs, including ioctl calls.
   c) Write a version of "mt" (or what every name you want to
      call it) that controls the tape from a command.  (Things
      like rewind, spacing etc. )

One thing I am hoping is that the scsi commands for the different
tape systems are the same.  I presume that that is what scsi is 
all about, but I'm not sure how much vendor specific commands are
needed to run tapes.   My tape drive I just bought is a Wangtek
60mb (QIC-36 interface) driven by an Adaptec SCSI<->QIC-36.  Those
who are interested could work on this problems.

--Phil

bdale@col.hp.com (Bdale Garbee) (03/06/91)

> Does it eat standard DC-600 tapes, or something else, or standard and/or
> something else?  Anyone know?  If it can make use of the *big* box of DC600
> tapes I've accumulated over the years...

Just answered my own question.  The flyer from CSC was in the mailbox today.
Looks like a nice tape drive, $219 each in 10 or more quantity.  I think I
can suggest that 4 would be used in my circle if others are interested to
the extent that a quantity buy meets or improves upon the above price... and
unless someone has some other brilliant idea.

The drive uses DC600 tapes for approximately 62meg/tape, or "XL tapes" which
I assume are the thinner/longer tapes for the higher density, and the drive
supposedly ships with one of the denser tapes...

Bdale

agodwin@acorn.co.uk (Adrian Godwin) (03/06/91)

In article <9103051758.AA01137@hpcsbg.col.hp.com> bdale@col.hp.com (Bdale Garbee) writes:
>> I just got the latest CSC (Corporate Systems Center -- where our
>> Miniscibes came from) flyer which has an 115MB Archive 2060S quarter
>> inch SCSI tape drive for $295 qty 1, $249 qty 5 and $219 qty 10.
>> While I hate QIC as much as the next guy (maybe more) 115MB is much
>> more reasonable than the usual 60MB, and I would consider buying one..
>

I'm surprised at the capacity quoted. I have an OEM manual for the Viper drives
here, and it says :

	Feature			Specification
				2060S			2125S

	Capacity		60 Mb			125 Mb
	(formatted, using 600ft tape cartridge)

	Track format		9-track serpentine	15-track serpentine

	Flux density		10,000 ftpi		12,500 ftpi

	Data density		8,000 bpi		10,000 bpi

	Avg. transfer rate	90 kB/sec		112.5 kB/sec

	Burst transfer rate, 	1.25Mb/sec		1.25MB/sec	
	max

	Recording format	QIC-24			QIC-120

	Read compatibility	QIC-24			QIC-24

E&OE.

It's possible the 115M capacity is for a longer tape than 600 feet - how long
is a DC600XPD ?

>Does it eat standard DC-600 tapes, or something else, or standard and/or
>something else?  Anyone know?  If it can make use of the *big* box of DC600
>tapes I've accumulated over the years...
>
>Bdale

'Eat' is probably the operative word :-). 


The spec says :

	2060S	ANSI X3B5/85-138	3M DC600A	read/write QIC24
		ANSI BSR X3.127		3M DC300XL	read/write QIC24


	2125S	ANSI X3B5/85-138	3M DC600A	read/write QIC120
							read only  QIC24
		ANSI BSR X3.127		3M DC300XL	read only  QIC24

I have a 2150S here which seems to have the same performance as the 2125.
It seems to work fine on 12,500 ftpi tapes like the 3M DC600A, and has
interchangeability qualities no worse than any other drives I've tried. 

The 100Mbyte+ capacity can be a limitation - I have a 9-track drive at home, 
and it can't read the tapes, of course. If you want maximum options in 
interchangeability with other machines, you should bear this in mind.

-adrian
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Godwin                                        (agodwin@acorn.co.uk)

sverre@lev.Seri.GOV (Sverre Froyen) (03/06/91)

>I would also join a group buy for Archive 2060S SCSI tape drives.

Me too!  One drive.

A couple of questions:

1) The drive is half height and has a SCSI interface, right?

2) Can it write and/or read QIC 24 format?  That is, is it
nine track?

3) I presume it is incompatible with the QIC ??? 150 MB format.

>I'd want one.  I assume that Minix532 would support it, of course.

We just force it :-)

--Sverre

-- 
Sverre Froyen
sverre@seri.gov, sunpeaks!seri!sverre

sverre@lev.Seri.GOV (Sverre Froyen) (03/06/91)

>
>
>So far, here is a small list of changes I think are needed for minix
>to suppport the tape drives in a "usual" way:
>   a) Add tape scsi commands to the scsi driver. (kernel)
>   b) Add knowledge of tapes to fs, including ioctl calls.
>   c) Write a version of "mt" (or what every name you want to
>      call it) that controls the tape from a command.  (Things
>      like rewind, spacing etc. )

I started doing this under Minix 1.3.  Unfortunately, during the
upgrade, I forgot to save my changes :-(.  Here is how I had
envisioned doing this.

a) Add a general scsi ioctl which would allow any scsi command
to be executed by scsi_hi.c.  This would be used by an mt command
to position the tape (and could be used by a format command to format
disk drives).  This would avoid having to teach the kernel about
the specifics for each individual device one might want to add.

b) I was hoping that tape read and writes would be similar enough
to disk read and writes to be handled by the current code.

--Sverre

-- 
Sverre Froyen
sverre@seri.gov, sunpeaks!seri!sverre

des@musashi.wpd.sgi.com (Des Young) (03/07/91)

Hi,
  can you send me a copy of your tape drive manual, I will then try
to have my driver handle anything special. (Or just photocopy anything
that is vendor-specific).
Des.

Mail:
231 No. San Tomas Aquino
Campbell
CA 95008

news@bungi.com.ogi.edu (03/07/91)

One thing we found out here at work is that if the drives are configured
(Wangtek) for 150meg like on our Sparcs, they will read 60 meg tapes but
they won't write on the 60meg tape cartridges!!!

If our situation is unique, any help as to the solution would be appreciated.
Right now, we use 6150 model cartridges for backups.  I can't see any
slot that  makes them special either.

Anyone have a solution?  If this is the case, you might keep looking for
a regular 60 meg drive if DC600 cartridges are cheaper.  On the other hand,
don't some of you have 300Meg drives?  150meg cartridges sure are handy
when we have to backup 1.2Gig B-).

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phil@cs.wwu.edu (Phil Nelson) (03/07/91)

   From: sverre@lev.Seri.GOV (Sverre Froyen)

   a) Add a general scsi ioctl which would allow any scsi command
   to be executed by scsi_hi.c.  This would be used by an mt command
   to position the tape (and could be used by a format command to format
   disk drives).  This would avoid having to teach the kernel about
   the specifics for each individual device one might want to add.

Isn't there a standard ioctl tape command set?  I don't have the POSIX
documents, but presume other programs besides mt might want to issue
commands to the tape drive.  Or is tapes one area where it is very 
difficult to provide a standard interface?

   b) I was hoping that tape read and writes would be similar enough
   to disk read and writes to be handled by the current code.

So was I, but in comparing my scsi commands manual for both my tape
and disk, it looked to me that they require slightly different bit
configurations in the read/write command blocks.  I don't have my
manuals with me at the moment, but as I remember it, my tape command
had some bits set in the command block that would make the disk read a
large number of sectors.  The tape used 3 bytes for number of blocks
to transfer and the disk used 3 and 3/4 bytes.  The 3/4 byte was at
the high order end and the tape specified them to contain some one
bits.  Has any one else noticed this or did I get a weird duck tape
controller?

--Phil

ian@sibyl.eleceng.ua.oz.au (03/09/91)

Rob Finley writes:
 > One thing we found out here at work is that if the drives are configured
 > (Wangtek) for 150meg like on our Sparcs, they will read 60 meg tapes but
 > they won't write on the 60meg tape cartridges!!!
 > 
 > If our situation is unique, any help as to the solution would be appreciated.

As far as I can tell, the cartridges are identical. The only
difference between QIC-24 (60MB) and QIC-150 (150MB) is the number of
tracks. I think the problem is that it is physically impossible to
write a wide QIC-24 track with a narrow QIC-150 head. On the other
hand, there is no problem reading a wide track with a narrow head.

DEC make a cartridge which writes multiple formats (I presume it has
multiple heads) but it is expensive.

In my experience, there should be no problem writing on a "60MB" cartridge
but you will actually be writing in QIC-150 format.

haral@unisol.uucp (Haral Tsitsivas) (03/18/91)

In article <9103042253.AA22062@Rosebud.Shiva.COM> phil@Shiva.COM (Phil Budne) writes:
>I just got the latest CSC (Corporate Systems Center -- where our
>Miniscibes came from) flyer which has an 115MB Archive 2060S quarter
>inch SCSI tape drive for $295 qty 1, $249 qty 5 and $219 qty 10.

Uhmm...  the price is good, but my 2060S only writes 60MB per tape (DC600).
That's on a Sparc machine running SunOS 4.1.

-- 
--Haral Tsitsivas
  UniSolutions Associates
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