adams@swbatl.sbc.com (Tom Adams - 235-7459) (01/09/91)
In article <524@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: >We are considering the purchase of an 8mm tape drive for backup purposes. > >I would appreciate any info/experience that anyone can offer. >Price, speed, service, interfacing, unix-able-ness, storage, etc... > >I have a Nixdorf Targon M35/50 (Pyramid 9810). > >The plan would be to connect the new 8mm tape drive to the system as drive 1. >(Drive 0 is the 9track tape drive that came with the system). > In article <524@trux.UUCP> car@trux.UUCP (Chris Rende) writes: >We are considering the purchase of an 8mm tape drive for backup purposes. >The plan would be to connect the new 8mm tape drive to the system as drive 1. >(Drive 0 is the 9track tape drive that came with the system). I've had a hell of a time getting any results from 2 Megatape drives. When I went to buy the drives I asked around, and was told that the Megatape was more reliable than the other drive in the PRISM catalog. I bought two, and was only able to crash my IOP for months. Meanwhile the FE told me that you couldn't unterminate the Kennedy 9 track or change it's address, lots of folks on the net seemed to have no problems at all (I did get lot's of identical dip switch advice), and I couldn't get the damn things to work at all. I was also going to daisy chain from an existing 9 track, and quickly noticed that most folks were wither not daisy chaining, or were only daisy-chianing the 8mm drives together. When I upgraded (9825 -> MIS 4/2) Pyramid came up with a one page sheet quoting board rev levels required to use the 8mm drives (and a big disclaimer saying this did not imply any support for 8mm drives), which explained my IOP crashes, and driver time outs (I think). After the upgrade, and lot's of effort on my part (new cables, etc), I can use the drives for tar, but dump won't work and cpio writes a tape but won't read it. It does work, kinda, and beats 22 9 track tapes, but it's still nasty. I'm not impressed with Pyramid assitance on the Megatape, Megatape support services ("I've never heard of any problems, it works fine on lot's of Pyramid's"), or Pyramid's speed at providing a reasonable high density backup alternative. -- uunet!swbatl!adams or adams@swbatl.sbc.com Tom Adams: 314-235-7459: Southwestern Bell Telephone Advanced Technology Lab BOOKS WANTED: pre-1930 radio, electrical & scientific topics
csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) (01/10/91)
>I'm not impressed with... Pyramid's speed at providing a reasonable high >density backup alternative. There's a simple reason for that: the people in Pyramid's peripherals group who were evaluating 8mm didn't think the technology was sufficiently reliable that it would be wise for the company to support it. Instead, they threw in with RDAT, which at the time vendors (like HP and Sony) were promising would be available Real Soon. Instead, it took over a year. I don't know what the current status is of the RDAT drives, and someone may even be looking at 8mm again. Hassle your salescritter. (Regarding reliability of 8mm: It wasn't a question of Megatape vs. Exabyte vs. anyone else; they all use the same Sony drive, and they all wore out and/or the tapes become unreadable after a few months of simulated production use. Don't ask me any more; I didn't run the tests, and it's been too long since I looked at the results. And there are definitely lots of very happy 8mm users out there.) <csg>