shollen%odin.Wright.EDU@relay.cs.net (Sheila Hollenbaugh) (12/01/88)
Recently we have had a problem with tape compatibility between 60M QIC tape drives on Sun systems. The systems are a 3/280 and two 3/60s, all running Sun-OS 3.X. The symptoms are as follows: the 280 cannot read tar tapes which are written by the 60's, but the 60's can read tar tapes written by the 280. I have perused old Sun-spots, and tried the obvious things. I have tried using both /dev/rst0 and /dev/rst8. I also read about the PROM update offer in v6n74, but the 280 seems to fit the criteria of not needing the update (light turns on when tape is loaded, PROM revision 2.3). I also tried using "dd" instead of "tar" to read the tape, without success. The error message I am receiving is "tar: blocksize=0". Has anyone seen this? I would appreciate any help you can give. This is causing real problems, and we anticipate buying more 3/60s with QIC drives. If you reply via email I will be glad to summarize if there is sufficient interest. Sheila Hollenbaugh Wright State University Research Center CSNET: shollen@SPOTS.Wright.Edu 3171 Research Blvd., Kettering, OH 45420 UUCP: ...!wright!shollen (513) 259-1382
weber@decvax.UUCP (Jeff Weber) (12/16/88)
shollen%odin.Wright.EDU@relay.cs.net (Sheila Hollenbaugh) writes: >Recently we have had a problem with tape compatibility between 60M QIC >tape drives on Sun systems. The systems are a 3/280 and two 3/60s, all >running Sun-OS 3.X. The symptoms are as follows: the 280 cannot read tar >tapes which are written by the 60's, but the 60's can read tar tapes >written by the 280. >... 1/4in tape of the type that Sun sells is not spec'd to be capable of going between machines. It is spec'd to be able to read back into the same machine that wrote the type. This little bit of info bit us big time when we couldn't distribute our product. The best you can do is to buy a drive qualifier that checks that your drives are very close to spec and then they should be able to pass tapes between them. It seems that each drive is a little off and it shows between machines. We had the same problems as you spoke of.... Jeff