steve@yoyodyne.mit.edu (Steve Jones) (01/05/91)
Greetings,
Recently I was gifted with a VAX 11/730 in the standard RL02/R80
configuration. At this stage of things I'm gearing up for the eventual
release of 4.4- or "Free"BSD, but want to make sure the tape drive and
controller I'm purchasing will work with my configuration. All comments
of a derisive or contemptuous nature can be redirected to /dev/null; it's
faster than my PC/XT clone, the price is/was right, and when I get bored I
can live out my fantasy of being a microcode programmer...
What I'm looking at getting is a Cipher F880-I tape drive. Vague
recollections suggest that this was repackaged by DEC as the TS05, and in
any event Cipher has a good rep around here. I am looking at picking up an
Emulex TC12 controller with all the cables, etc. The TC11 is listed in the
4.3BSD installation docs as supported with all the major label tape drives
including Cipher. But I wouldn't mind hearing someone say specifically
that they have seen something like this work under VMS or UN*X...
Other comments about the 730 and BSD would be welcome. In
particular, there are several points in the 4.3BSD docs where the writer
laments the fact that the Nebula didn't have any buffered data paths, and
warned that different things might not work. Like the bootstrap code. So
a few words addressing this concern would be nifty. As I don't expect
4.4BSD to support the 730 on the distribution tape I may be using the 4.3
bootstrap code, or possibly the Ultrix 2.x standalone stuff. Any other
comments would be welcome too.
One last mostly unrelated item: the TK25. For some reason I keep
thinking that this is a QIC format tape drive, and suspecting that it is
in fact a QIC-{02,24,36} compatible device that will manage to put 60
megabytes of data on a 600 foot DC-600A type cartridge. But I have to
admit that blind speculation says it could be an ancestor of the TK50,
released as a companion to the RC25 hard disk... I've never seen one, but
like the idea of being able to read a standard format tape drive.
All replies heartily encouraged to arrive via EMail. If there is
interest, i.e. someone writes and says "I'd like to know too," then I'll
summarize and post. If there's enough interest, I'll do it here and not
over in alt.folklore.computers ;-) Please note that follow-ups are
directed to comp.sys.dec, just in case. Thanks.
--Steve.
--
Steve Jones MIT/VAX Resource Center, Cambridge MA 02139 617/253-7438
Internet addresses: steve@yoyodyne.mit.edu smjones@athena.mit.edu
"Chaos will ensue if the variable i is altered..." - SysV Programmers Guide