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 -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rolf Andersson ! INTERNET: xrolfa@dna.lu.se Sankt Mansgatan 9E ! UUCP: ...!{uunet,mcvax,munnari}!enea!dna.lu!xrolfa S-222 29 Lund, Sweden ! PHONE: int+46-46126845 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-). ----- "We know what the reponse of the American people will be, and it's not attractive. They really do believe the Bill of Rights gave them unleaded regular for $1.06 a gallon, and they better get it or, by God, they'll get the bums out of Office." -- Energy Secretary James Watkins on taxing energy. quintro!bpdsun1!rmf@lll-winken.llnl.gov or uunet!tiamat!quintro!bpdsun1!rmf
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 Voice: (213) 542-0068, Fax: (213) 370-4024 ...!uupsi!unisol!haral or ...!uunet!ashtate!unisol!haral