glass@tornado.Berkeley.EDU (Adam Glass) (05/31/90)
On a 10.1 system with no patch tapes, no extended software, etc Can a
8mm type scsi drive be used? The scsi hardware is there. The question
is is Apollo's handling of tape related scsi standard enough for the
drive to function with reasonable capacity? I only need to run rbak,
and wbak...
thanks,
Adam Glass
--
Adam Glass |Internet: glass@soda.berkeley.edu
|"Ignore Reality"krowitz%richter@UMIX.CC.UMICH.EDU (David Krowitz) (05/31/90)
The answer to your question is yes and no. You can run an Exabyte tape drive off of the SCSI port of a Western Digital WD7000 multifuntion disk controller (the controller shipped with the large disks on the DN3500/4500) if you use Omniback. Omniback is the only Apollo program which uses the new tape I/O library which includes support for the 8mm drive. All of the other programs (wbak/rbak, tar, dd, etc) use the older tape library which only supports cartridge tapes and 9-track magtapes. Workstation Solutions sells the Exabyte drive bundled with a tape I/O library which will allow wbak/rbak, tar, dd, etc. to use the 8mm drive as if it were a 9-track magtape. Their library works with the WD7000 controller on the DN3500/4500, with the SCSI port of the DN2500, and with a separate controller board which they supply for DN3000/4000's or for DN3500/4500' which do not already have a WD7000. I've tested all three variations, and they all seem to work ok. I have no idea why Apollo's support for the 8mm drive has been so poor. Basically, unless you only want to run Omniback you are forced to go to a 3rd party vendor. I would not expect this situation to get any better in the future. At our last New England ADUS local user's group meeting the HP peripherals presentation was really pushing 4mm DAT's as a superior alternative to 8mm drives. Frankly, I don't see much advantage to the 4mm drives unless you have a completely new tape backup/archive program to go with it ... but the HP rep did not seem very responsive to the fact that the current installed base is all 8mm drives. -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)
thompson@PAN.SSEC.HONEYWELL.COM (John Thompson) (06/01/90)
> On a 10.1 system with no patch tapes, no extended software, etc Can a > 8mm type scsi drive be used? The scsi hardware is there. Not as far as I'm aware. The scsi drivers were on psk4 (??) and then incorporated into sr10.2. The fact that the scsi controller is present doesn't help you. > The question > is is Apollo's handling of tape related scsi standard enough for the > drive to function with reasonable capacity? I only need to run rbak, > and wbak... Unless I'm (again) wrong, you wouldn't be able to run r/wbak to the scsi drives even WITH the appropriate drivers. On our systems (10.2 and 10.1 w/ psk-whatever), we still cannot use r/wbak. The documentation states that you won't be able to (what -dev would you try?). Attempts to back up to a "file" /dev/rmts8 fail with some error (I forget which). Unix 'tar' works, and Omniback does, of course, but I'm not aware of any other supported s/w for read/write to SCSI. As a BTW: You do _NOT_ need to buy Apollo's 8mm drive. We get along just fine with straight ExaBytes (purchased from 3rd-party supplier). John Thompson Honeywell, SSEC thompson@pan.ssec.honeywell.com thompson@animal.ssec.honeywell.com
hanche@imf.unit.no (Harald Hanche-Olsen) (06/01/90)
Could someone please set the record straight for me... David Krowitz
writes:
Basically, unless you only want to run Omniback you are forced
to go to a 3rd party vendor.
Gee, I was under the impression that you have to go to a 3rd party
vendor under *any* circumstance! We have been waiting for our Exabyte
since December, and having been told various delivery dates throughout
the spring the story we are now told is that there are technical
problems and they (HP) wont promise any specific delivery date at all.
So could someone please tell me...
DO HP-DELIVERED Exabytes FOR THE APOLLOS EXIST AT ALL?? HAS ANYBODY
ACTUALLY SEEN ONE, USED ONE, AND CAN CONFIRM THAT THEY WORK??
Of course, the problem might be that we were going to use ours with a
DN10000. If they work on others but not the 10000 then we might just
do that. We have enough 3500s around if that's what it takes.
Of course, it is very tempting to cancel the order with HP and go for
a drive from a third party. We already have the controller and the
Omniback software. Recommendations, anyone?
- Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@imf.unit.no>
Division of Mathematical Sciences
The Norwegian Institute of Technology
N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAYachille@cernvax.UUCP (achille petrilli) (06/02/90)
As I've seen lot of people asking how to run w/rbak on 8mm, here it is: wbak -stdout ... | dd of=/dev/rmts8 obs=8k dd if=/dev/rmts8 bs=8k | rbak -stdin ... This has worked fine for us. You need sr10.2 and NO Omniback. Just the standard system. Also, you can buy any 3rd party Exabyte and plug it on the Apollo. All Exabyte are exactly the same, the only thing that changes from one to another is the box and the power supply. The mechanics and the internal SCSI controller are manufactured always by Exabyte. Hope this helps, Achille Petrilli Management Information Systems