ruiu@dragos.UUCP (Dragos Ruiu) (09/21/88)
Does anyone have anything approaching drivers for a tape backup that
uses the second floppy drive as an interface?
You see, I ordered another uport system for a computer I was setting
up. I wanted a tape backup system...
me: "Well, what tape drives do you support ?"
uport:"We support Everex and Archive."
me: "Do you support all the archive line including their new Viper series?"
uport:"Sure..."
me: "How much ?"
uport:"$99"
me: "send me one..."
So I went out and bought an Archive XL tape drive. The software comes and
guess what, only one model of the Archive line is supported. It needs a
60meg tape drive with a 499 (?) controller.
Anybody wanna buy a tape drive ? Never Used ?
I've never really had any big problems with uport. Actually, I've been
really impressed on several occasions. I hope they talk to their sales
guys though and tell them about this. Their tech support people certainly
do know about it.
It strikes me that a driver that talks to a tape drive that looks like a
floppy should be easy. Can anyone help me ?
--
Dragos Ruiu ruiu@dragos.UUCP "We will probably never announce a processor
...alberta!dragos!ruiu as a RISC processor."-Ken Olsen ...wanna bet?asgard@cpro.UUCP (J.R. Stoner) (09/24/88)
From article <433@dragos.UUCP>, by ruiu@dragos.UUCP (Dragos Ruiu): , Does anyone have anything approaching drivers for a tape backup that , uses the second floppy drive as an interface? [...] , It strikes me that a driver that talks to a tape drive that looks like a , floppy should be easy. Can anyone help me ? I can't help you on specifics, but I can tell you from long and sad experience a floppy-tape is not an easy task. How do I know? I wrote the TIP program for CompuPro tape backup using IRWIN 110 drives two years ago. The hardest thing was the host software had to do any error management and random access positioning of the DC1000 tape. The hardest thing was the gotchas when you had to be two blocks in front of the desired block and then you can accelerate and be up to speed by the time you reach your block. Also, the tape system required me to shut down *everything*. The Concurrent BDOS, floppy disk interrupts, hard disk interrupts, and most catastrophic: the network server interrupt. We couldn't have those nast 377.2 ms reconfiguration interrupts happen while I am trying to zoot data at non-dma rates now, or I might just have to stop the streamer and backup about 4 blocks and reposition and attempt to restart that block. Needless to say, TIP wound up as a program whose listing is a stack of paper 6" high. It is not a pretty sight. Thank goodness we buy MCD-40's now. I don't ever want to write another IRWIN driver. , Dragos Ruiu ruiu@dragos.UUCP "We will probably never announce a processor , ...alberta!dragos!ruiu as a RISC processor."-Ken Olsen ...wanna bet?