al@uunet.uu.net (Al Donaldson) (06/27/89)
Is there some reason why Scotch DC300A data cartridges shouldn't work properly with a standard Sun shoebox? I recently bought a batch of 300As and 300XLs at an auction (new, in boxes, plastic wrapped). The 300XLs work fine for dumps, tars, etc., but the 300As won't handle dump at all (forget exactly what error..) and barely handle tar -- it writes ok but generally bombs out on reads. When reading tapes created with "tar cf /dev/rst8" I get the following errors at different locations on the tape: sense key(0x8): blank check, error code(0x34): end-of-medium, or sense key(0x3): medium error, error code(0x11): hard data error I doubt if I'm actually running out of tape (end-of-medium) since the error occurs at different locations and doesn't occur during write. I'm having problems with DC300As written both locally and at other sites, but I have no problems with DC300XLs, Verbatim DL600ECTs, or the Sony (?) cartridges used for Sun OS distribution. Incidentally, the difference between DC300A and DC300XL is "standard length certified" vs " extra length certified", whatever that means. And I routinely do a retension when I read in a tape from outside, or when I get read errors. But that doesn't seem to help. I'm using "tar xf /dev/rst8", which according to the st man page means QIC 24 format instead of QIC 11. Can anyone tell me what this means in practical terms? I've tried to RTFM, but can't find anything about it in the tar, st, mtio, ar(4), etc. man pages or in the admin manual. About all I know about QIC is that its a group of standards for quarter- inch cartridge tape. Any help, pointers, etc will be appreciated. Please respond by mail since my comp.sys.sun newsfeed has been interrupted somewhere upline. Al Donaldson
ESC1298%ESOC.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Danielle Heinzer) (07/28/89)
Ref: v8n 60 Al Donaldson was claiming that he cannot use Scotch DC300A tapes to tar or dump files from a standard Sun shoebox. I do it without any problem on Sun 3/60 with shoe-box and scsi tape drive using st8. The SunOS is 4.0.1. I used also these tapes before on a Sun 3/160 with SunOS 3.5. The tapes logo are: Scotch DC 300A data cartridge Danielle Heinzer ESA Computer Department/Computer Services European Space Operations Centre Robert-Bosch-str. 5 6100 Darmstadt West-Germany Tel int : 49-6151-886540 Bitnet : ESC1298@ESOC