hinton@netcom.UUCP (Greg Hinton) (06/25/89)
The tedium of backing up data from hard disk to floppy is driving me crazy! I've decided to bite the bullet & get my 1/4-inch streaming tape drive working under minix, no matter how much blood I have to sweat to do it. Before I begin, however, I thought I'd check & see if I'm duplicating someone else's efforts. Anybody written a device driver for these beasts? Or even a kludged program to read & write to them? My unit is a Mountain TD4340. I have the OEM manual, which has just enough code to hint that this could be pretty difficult. Any info at all would really be appreciated. Please email. Of course, any positive results in this project will be posted back here. Thanks.
rbthomas@athos.rutgers.edu (Rick Thomas) (06/30/89)
> Before I begin, however, I thought I'd check & see if I'm duplicating someone > else's efforts. Anybody written a device driver for these beasts? Or even > a kludged program to read & write to them? My unit is a Mountain TD4340. I > have the OEM manual, which has just enough code to hint that this could be > pretty difficult. I have been looking into various options for the same sort of thing. I bought an Irwin 64Mb tape to backup my Dos stuff a while back and had hopes of being able to use it under Minix. No soap. I called Irwin and talked to everybody I could get to answer the phone, (not the president of the company though... Maybe I should try that tack.) All I got was blank stares from salescritters (A blank stare over the phone is interesting to observe... "Source code? What's that? Interface specs? I don't have anything by that name on my price list... What operating system did you say you were running? Is that anything like Xenix?") and hostility from the technical types. "I'm sorry, that's proprietary. Click" I have gotten the same runaround from just about everybody else I have called, in one form or another. I'm still trying. I'll post if I get anything. Long .signature follows -- hit "n" now. ======================================================================== 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
Leisner.Henr@xerox.com (marty) (06/30/89)
I sympathize with ya Rick. If you have enough space on you're DOS partition, it shouldn't be too hard to tar the Minix partition and leave it in a DOS file, then let these brain-dead DOS-only tape backup tools backup the tar file. Hey, after working in the Dos world for about 4 years, I expect this to happen with DOS vendors -- when I see board/subsystem vendors who supply technical specifications and source code (shudder...) for device drivers, I applaud them. marty ARPA: leisner.henr@xerox.com GV: leisner.henr NS: leisner:wbst139:xerox UUCP: hplabs!arisia!leisner