pung@ornl-ncc.ARPA.UUCP (04/15/87)
Greg Hamm recently inquired: >I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has upgraded a TU-81 to a TU-81 Plus. >The DEC documentation says this upgrade adds buffer memory in order to >speed up, e.g., BACKUP by allowing the tape drive to stream more consistently. >Does it work? Is it worth it? Doing backups on a TU81 is pretty painful. >My other option, of course, is to shell out for a TU78. But even this is >not without problems: what happens if I trade in my 785 for a VAXBI machine >next year? Has anyone heard of a VAXBI-compatible tape drive other than >the TU81? Will DEC ever produce a *real* tape drive for VAXen? Another option you have is to go ahead and purchase the TU78 tape now and use it on your VAX-11/785. If in the future you upgrade to a BI based machine then you can utilize your existing TU78 drive by upgrading it (approx. 12k) to the HSC based TA78 tape drive. Of course this also requires you to buy an HSC50/HSC70 and a tape controller card (HSC5X-CA), but if your planned upgrade includes an HSC controller than you are set, if not and you dont have any cluster plans than this option is probably not cost effective. |------------------------------------------------------------------| | Mike Pung | (615) 574-8082 | | Oak Ridge National Lab | Pung%ornl-ncc@ornl-msr.arpa | | Martin Marietta Energy Systems | | |------------------------------------------------------------------| ------