rbthomas@athos.rutgers.edu (Rick Thomas) (07/05/89)
In response to -- >> My tale of woe in dealing with Irwin tech/sales support looking for >> information on writing a driver for their hardware for Minix. Greg Hinton writes -- >You might try again & ask for their "OEM Manual". I've never run across >a manufacturer that didn't have one for their product, although this could >be a first. If you don't get anywhere with the sales/tech-support morons, >definitely talk to the president. Tell him his staff is full of idiots who >don't know what an OEM Manual is. Either you'll get frighteningly fast >results, or his mind has also been snatched by the aliens. > >You're tape drive doesn't sound like QIC-40; it sounds like a more deluxe unit. >The QIC-40's all hook directly to the floppy controller card. That way they're >cheaper -- a poor man's mag tape drive. The better drives have their own >controller card. Also, I think they're all 40 Megs (I think that's what the >40 in QIC-40 means). > >I'm interested to hear how things go. Good luck. > > >Greg Hinton >INET: hinton@netcom.uucp >UUCP: {amdahl,apple}!netcom!hinton >"I've never let school get in the way of my education." > I will try the "OEM manual" trick with Irwin. It may help. I will also try a letter to the president of the company, if I can find out who he/she is and how to reach her/him. The tape drive talks to an add-on board that connects to the floppy controller. I'm not sure what the add-on board does. It may just be there to pass power to the drive. The tapes are DC2000 tapes, but they may be extended length, which would account for the extra storage capacity. There is no indication anywhere in the user literature that indicates whether it talks QIC-40 or some other protocol. Incidentally, I did succeed in getting hold of the people who control the QIC-40 standard (Freeman Associates in Santa Barbara), and they sent me (free) the full set of literature on the standard. The command protocol is really *gross*! You send commands to the drive by sending a string of pulses over the "STEP" line (the one the floppys use to move the head from track to track) There are 30-odd different commands, so (assuming for the sake of argument that the Irwin drive is at least similar to QIC-40) one may have to send as many as 30 pulses, at intervals of 2.5 ms, and the timing between pulses is fairly critical, so the sending will probably have to be done in a tight cpu loop, possibly with interrupts prevented. The drive responds by sending status info back over the TRACK-ZERO and INDEX lines. That's up to 75 ms with interrupts prevented. What does that do to an RS232 line at 9600bps?!? Still, It shouldn't be too hard to write a driver, if I could get full specs. It just wouldn't be very good for concurrent use with communications activity. While the drive is supposed to be capable of formatting standard 3M DC2000 cartridges for use with the supplied backup program, I have only succeeded in doing it once, out of about a dozen tries. The pre-formatted cartridges from Irwin are about 50% more expensive than unformatted ones from 3M, but they seem to be the only reasonable alternative, given my experience. If I could find a good SCSI based drive and host adapter (with an OEM manual), I would junk the Irwin thingie in a minute, but I haven't yet found anybody who sells them for AT's. Got any suggestions? Rick ======================================================================== Rick Thomas, Manager Supercomputer Remote Access Center Rutgers University, College of Engineering Brett and Bowser Roads Piscataway, NJ 08855-0909 Phone: (201) 932-4301 Internet: rbthomas@jove.rutgers.edu UUCP: {any backbone site}!rutgers!jove.rutgers.edu!rbthomas Alternate UUCP: {convex|c1apple|karna}!kingtut!rbthomas There are lots of dangerous people on the streets of Manhattan... muggers, rapists, mimes... ======================================================================== -- Rick Thomas uucp: {ames, cbosgd, harvard, moss, seismo}!rutgers!jove.rutgers.edu!rbthomas arpa: rbthomas@JOVE.RUTGERS.EDU Phone: (201) 932-4301
misha@aeras.UUCP (Michael Umansky) (07/06/89)
>>In article <Jul.4.22.07.42.1989.8770@athos.rutgers.edu> rbthomas@athos.rutgers.edu (Rick Thomas) writes:
Yes, any IRWIN tape drive should only be used under DOS which has no
multitasking and doesn't care about timings.
A good combination for PC/XT/AT is an ARCHIVE SC499R Controller and any
QIC-36 compatible 1/4" cartridge tape drive (such as Archive 4945L - 9 heads
fits 60 Mbytes on DC600A cartridge) and this setup is not much more expensive
than IRWIN.
misha
--
NAME: Michael Umansky (sun!aeras!foxy!misha)
WORK: Arix Corp.; 821 Fox Lane; San Jose, CA 95131
HOME: 4331 Lincoln Way; San Francisco, CA 94122
PHONE: (408) 922-1751 (work); (415) 564-3921 (home)uri@arnor.UUCP (Uri Blumenthal) (07/07/89)
From article <348@aeras.UUCP>, by misha@aeras.UUCP (Michael Umansky): > .............. > QIC-36 compatible 1/4" cartridge tape drive (such as Archive 4945L - 9 heads > fits 60 Mbytes on DC600A cartridge) and this setup is not much more expensive > than IRWIN. Misha, sorry, but are you sure it's 9 HEADS? I've heard about 9 TRACKS, but it's not the same! Uri.
misha@aeras.UUCP (Michael Umansky) (07/11/89)
In article <247@arnor.UUCP> uri@arnor.UUCP (Uri Blumenthal) writes: >From article <348@aeras.UUCP>, by misha@aeras.UUCP (Michael Umansky): >> QIC-36 compatible 1/4" cartridge tape drive (such as Archive 4945L - 9 heads >Misha, sorry, but are you sure it's 9 HEADS? I've heard about 9 TRACKS, but Yes, silly me, I meant 9 tracks, sorry for confusion. misha -- NAME: Michael Umansky (sun!aeras!foxy!misha) WORK: Arix Corp.; 821 Fox Lane; San Jose, CA 95131 HOME: 4331 Lincoln Way; San Francisco, CA 94122 PHONE: (408) 922-1751 (work); (415) 564-3921 (home)