[comp.sys.sun] Which brand of Exabyte tape drive to buy????

whiz@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Oishii Ichigo) (01/04/90)

I'd like to hear from anyone with someone to say about the different
brands of Exabyte tape drives.  I realize that the hardware should be
exactly the same; it is the software and support that I'm interested in.
Before plunking down several thousand dollars on a drive I want to know
I'm not getting a clunker.

Thanks,

gene@uunet.uu.net (Gene Amdur) (02/01/90)

In article <4409@brazos.Rice.edu> elroy!suned1!efb@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Everett F. Batey II) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 13, message 7 of 19
>
>RUMORS, these following are NOT from personal factual knowledge, but from
>the usual semi-reliable, net-neighbor resources.
>
>1 - EXB-8200 may work on SPARC hosts with OS 4.0.3
>2 - .. may NOT work on Sun 3 with OS 4.0.3,
>3 - MAY NEVER work on Sun 3 without independent SCSI Ctlr, MAYBE Sun's
>4 - MAY require a patch to the SunOS 403 driver to allow EXB to coexist
>    with SCSI tape ( QIC Cartridge ).
>5 - I decline to repeat a few of the other rumors I heard.

We have just installed an Exabyte on our Sun 3/160 run OS 4.0.3.  To get
it working we upgraded our sun scsi-2 board to a scsi-3 board and then
plugged the drive in.  We were warned that the Exabyte had to be the first
device in the SCSI chain so that's where we put it.  So far (~three weeks)
everything has worked well.  We do backups in record time overnight on our
120MP vidio tapes (Sony being the preferred brand (we tried TDK but had
about a 50% failure rate)).

gene@array.uucp
(..uunet!utai!lsuc!array!gene)