bolson@milton.u.washington.edu (Ed Bolson) (10/02/90)
I am the proud new owner of a WangDat Model 1300 4mm DAT drive from R-Squared. I have attached it to a VAXStation 3100, model 38/SPX, running VMS 5.3-1. The system recognizes the drive and I have successfully backed up and restored small and large datasets to it. However . . . I have had a lot of nagging problems with these operations. File search on the DAT drive is supposed to be very fast. However, I just did a search for a non-existent file on a tape with 2 BACKUP datasets, taking about 600 MB. The search lasted an hour to tell me there was no such dataset. Note I was looking for a Backup dataset to list, not a file IN a dataset. Also, I have occasionally had a refusal by the drive to do anything. Of course, this slow search speed means I don't always know what it is doing. There are no displays or diagnositics for the device, so I can't easily monitor its operation. I have received "SCSI phase errors" errpr log messages and "Command Transmission Failure" along with FATAL CONTROLLER ERROR system messages. My question (finally): is this a drive problem, or a problem with the supplied SCSI software from DEC. Since DEC doesn't yet have a DAT drive out there, I am not sure who to blame. When responding (preferably by e-mail) please keep in mind this is a VMS VAXStation, not a DECStation, and not a machine with a Q-bus to SCSI converter. This uses the native SCSI bus on the VAXStation. Thanks, Ed Bolson
bolson@milton.u.washington.edu (Ed Bolson) (10/02/90)
I am very sorry, but the posting program here can't seem to read my totally unprotected signature file. Ed Bolson Bolson@u.washington.edu bolson@cv3150.hs.washington.edu bolson@max.bitnet (Previous post was about problems with new SCSI DAT drive on VAXStation running VMS)