bukys@rochester.UUCP (Liudvikas Bukys) (08/07/85)
We are looking for a 6250-bpi tape drive to attach to a VAX. The candidates seem to be the Cipher M990 and the Kennedy 9400. I would appreciate hearing about other people's experiences with these drives. I have heard rumors about (1) difficulties with the automatic threading of some tapes, (2) problems writing past logical EOT. I have also seen the report about the TC7000 not flushing its buffer right on certain block sizes. I would approciate confirmation or elucidation on these problems or any others. I would also like to hear comments on reliability, and anything else you can think of. Thanks! Liudvikas Bukys bukys@rochester.arpa rochester!bukys (via allegra, decvax, seismo)
karsh@geowhiz.UUCP (Bruce Karsh) (08/08/85)
In article <10918@rochester.UUCP> bukys@rochester.UUCP (Liudvikas Bukys) writes: >We are looking for a 6250-bpi tape drive to attach to a VAX. > >The candidates seem to be the Cipher M990 and the Kennedy 9400. I >would appreciate hearing about other people's experiences with these >drives. I have heard rumors about (1) difficulties with the automatic >threading of some tapes, (2) problems writing past logical EOT. We just bought the M990 drive. We had problems with tape motion around BOT. Cipher sent us new ROMS and the problems went away. We have had no problems with tape loading. Our old Cipher Micro-Streamer II's had a lot of problems with loading, especially if the takeup hub and tachometer pinch roller were not clean. So if people are having these problems, then you could ask if they ever clean these parts. The biggest limitation that I see in using the M990 is that it will not write tape blocks longer than 32K bytes long. The manuals that come with the drive is terrible. The configuration and setup promts are sort of confusing. They are quite a bit larger than the Micro-Streamer II's. Fortunately, Cipher came up with much nicer rack mounting hardware for the M990. The M990's still take up a lot less rack space than conventional vertical mount tape drives. One nice feature is that the transfer rate from the CPU to the drive is specifiable when you configure the drive. This means that they will work with most any Pertec compatible controller. They sure are fast for such a low cost unit! (Sorry, I don't know whether we've ever tried writing past logical EOT. We mostly use our drive for dumps, tars and restores. They seem to work ok). Bruce Karsh U. Wisc. Dept. Geology and Geophysics 1215 W Dayton, Madison, WI 53706 (608) 262-1697 {ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!geowhiz!karsh -- Bruce Karsh U. Wisc. Dept. Geology and Geophysics 1215 W Dayton, Madison, WI 53706 (608) 262-1697 {ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!geowhiz!karsh