tony@tui.marcam.dsir.govt.nz (Tony Cooper) (04/09/91)
I have made my st streaming tape driver (which is provided free by MicroNet
with their tape drives) available for public use as a demo version. Previously
this was only available to specific beta sites. The catch is that the demo
version has some limitations - namely that it has a finite life after which
it self destructs (it prints a warning five seconds before expiry: "This tape
will self destruct in five seconds. Good Luck.")
The driver supports the following drives under A/UX:
TEAC MT-2ST/N50 (Micro/Tape MT-155)
TEAC MT-2ST/F (Micro/Tape MT-600)
Tandberg TDC 3800 (Micro/Tape MT-320)
Tandberg TDC 3660 (Micro/Tape MT-150)
WangDAT Model 1300 (Micro/Tape MT-1300)
and unofficially supports Exabyte and GIGATape (with Archive coming soon). If
you do not have a MicroNet tape drive this driver may still work for you. It
seems to work with no problems for all other manufacturer's versions of the
above drives.
Currently it is not MicroNet's policy to sell the driver to non MicroNet users.
As far as I know, MicroNet is the only company supporting A/UX for the first
four of the above drives, and MicroNet and FWB are the only companies
supporting the WangDAT. I think FWB also support the Exabyte. My information
is probably out of date. I am adding support for non MicroNet drives
in the expectation that one day they will allow me to release the driver for
general use - maybe Apple will buy it for A/UX (Most other UNIX machines
support a range of tape drives instead of just a single obsolete model).
(However, Apple's tc driver unofficially supports Archive and Viper drives).
The driver is available by anonymous ftp from jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov in the
pub/st directory.
Bug reports, feedback etc are welcome. Anyone who finds a bug will be
invited to become a beta tester (and will get a non expiring version).
Cheers,
Tony Cooper
sramtrc@albert.dsir.govt.nz