aryeh@eddie.MIT.EDU (Aryeh M. Weiss) (06/26/87)
Keywords: In article <149@qetzal.UUCP> rcw@qetzal.UUCP (sysop) writes: >In article <318@xios.XIOS.UUCP>, greg@xios.XIOS.UUCP (Greg Franks) writes: >| In article <354@micropen> dave@micropen.UUCP writes: >| >| Bell Technologies puts out a very nice QIC tape unit for the PC. The >| controller takes a full slot. [...] You >| can also get outboard QIC drives. >| > >This is all very well and good, but why does it cost $2500? If >Microport and Bell Technologies have a business relationship, why >would Microport kill that by supporting inexpensive tape drives? > Microport now has (at least at beta stage) drivers for the QIC-02 controller (eg Everex Excell). If we get them and they work I will post it. They plan to charge a nominal update fee, so you will have backup for about $900 (less if you get a QIC-36 Archeive drive). I heard that Bell Tech. doctors a ROM on the controller so that their driver only works with the controllers that THEY sell. Buyer beware... -- aryeh@eddie.mit.edu mit-eddie!lees-rif!aryeh
chapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman) (06/26/87)
> > In article <149@qetzal.UUCP> rcw@qetzal.UUCP (sysop) writes: > >In article <318@xios.XIOS.UUCP>, greg@xios.XIOS.UUCP (Greg Franks) writes: > >| In article <354@micropen> dave@micropen.UUCP writes: > >| > >| Bell Technologies puts out a very nice QIC tape unit for the PC. The > >| controller takes a full slot. [...] You > >| can also get outboard QIC drives. > >| > > > >This is all very well and good, but why does it cost $2500? If > >Microport and Bell Technologies have a business relationship, why > >would Microport kill that by supporting inexpensive tape drives? > > > Microport now has (at least at beta stage) drivers for the QIC-02 > controller (eg Everex Excell). If we get them and they work I will > post it. They plan to charge a nominal update fee, so you will have > backup for about $900 (less if you get a QIC-36 Archeive drive). > Does anyone know which of the popular tape units have a full AT interface? I took a look at an Archive unit the other day but it is a PC interface card so you only get dma to the 1st mb of memory which as far as I can tell means your driver will have to set up buffers in low memory then copy the data from the existing buffer(s) before initiating the transfer. Aside from being messy it seems like the extra overhead will make it less likely that you will be able to keep the drive streaming. Does the (Archive) QIC-36 above refer to the tape format (or something else) or is it an alternative to the QIC-02 interface? Is the Everex Excell the same as the Everex stream60 drives I see advertised in magazines for about $700? I have called Microport to see just which drives they plan to support but all they could tell me were that they were Everex and Archive drives - I wanted model numbers so I could get one now and know that it would be compatible with whatever driver they eventually release. Why do I want one before they release a driver? Because it could be a long time before they do release it - I would rather spend my time trying to write my own driver than backing up 100mb of disk to floppies. At worst I would have to wait until they can make doscp write to the hard disk properly and then I will just use a 20 mb dos partition and do tar files to be backed up | doscat ; boot dos ; backup file; reboot unix ugly but still better than floppies. Any help would be appreciated. john ...{seismo,watmath,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!fornax!bby-bc!john *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** -- {watmath,seismo,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!fornax!sfulccr!chapman or ...!ubc-vision!sfucmpt!chapman
jl@fornax.uucp (JL) (06/28/87)
We are using a Kennedy 60 MByte cartridge-system 'Superkit' from Semad Computer Products on an AT. It does not have a 'full AT' interface, but it can back up 20 MBytes (all that we currently have on the hard disk) in about 3 or 4 minutes in an 'Image' type backup. The drive keeps streaming all the time. The cost was somewhere near $1000.00 (Canadian) in February 1987. It comes with an excellent menu-driven backup/restore program. It is an internal unit. -- Jay-El