dave@visual1.jhuapl.edu (Dave Weintraub) (04/12/91)
A potential user brought in an 8mm drive. We put it into the SCSI daisychain, restarted the system, and used SMIT to say that there was another tape drive on the stystem. When we try to use it (eg, tar), the system keeps asking us to mount volume 1 and hit enter. Do I recall that there was some discussion on this a few months back? Any help/comments are appreciated. Thanks ... Dave
jpe@egr.duke.edu (John P. Eisenmenger) (04/12/91)
From article <1991Apr11.185853.17502@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>, by dave@visual1.jhuapl.edu (Dave Weintraub): > A potential user brought in an 8mm drive. We put it into the SCSI daisychain, > restarted the system, and used SMIT to say that there was another tape drive > on the stystem. When we try to use it (eg, tar), the system keeps asking us > to mount volume 1 and hit enter. > Do I recall that there was some discussion on this a few months back? Yes. As it turns out, IBM decided the standard Exabyte PROM was a bit crufty so they replaced it with their own. A standard SCSI 8mm drive will therefore not work with the RS/6000. The two options 3rd-party vendors have are: to write a device driver for their drive, or to make their tape drive work like IBM's. I went through all the trials of trying to get a standard 8mm drive to work only to find out the information above. At least you didn't buy the drive... I currently have a CCG 8mm drive and it is working well (they took the second approach). > Any help/comments are appreciated. > Thanks ... Dave
amaranth@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Paul Amaranth) (04/13/91)
In article <1397@cameron.egr.duke.edu> jpe@egr.duke.edu (John P. Eisenmenger) writes: ... deleted stuff ... >Yes. As it turns out, IBM decided the standard Exabyte PROM was a bit >crufty so they replaced it with their own. A standard SCSI 8mm drive >will therefore not work with the RS/6000. The two options 3rd-party >vendors have are: to write a device driver for their drive, or to make >their tape drive work like IBM's. The (oh no!) April 1 issue of _Unix Today_ has an ad on page 72 for ICE Communications which talks about "low cost" add ons for the 6000, including Exabyte and DAT. I have no experience with this company, but I thought the ad interesting enough to pull for my tickler file. It looks like they wrote their own drivers. The wording on the ad seems a bit strange ..., but maybe that's just me. Anyone know anything about these folks? -- Paul Amaranth office: (313) 370 4541 (also voicemail) (internet) amaranth@vela.acs.oakland.edu | WANTED: Clever saying (bitnet) amaranth@oakland | to fill this space. (uucp) ...!uunet!umich!vela!amaranth | Puns need not apply.
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (04/13/91)
jpe@egr.duke.edu (John P. Eisenmenger) writes: > ...As it turns out, IBM decided the standard Exabyte PROM was a bit > crufty so they replaced it with their own. A standard SCSI 8mm drive > will therefore not work with the RS/6000... I think "crufty" is a little more interpretation than the situation deserves. Would it be too cynical to suggest that they only wanted to support the drives they sell...and that the way to achieve this was to make the drives they sell incompatible with other 8mm drives? -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.
shah@cdsun.fnal.gov (Hemant Shah) (04/14/91)
We are using Exabyte 8mm tape drive on our RS6000, IBM
does not support any 3rd party 8mm drives. Right now we are testing beta
version of the driver supplied by IBM they are not yet officially supporting the
driver. It seems to be working fine but when we try to restore the disk, it
screws up inodes. We have to run fsck, and varyonvg (??) commands and then
everything is back to normal.
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##### #####jonathan@cs.pitt.edu (Jonathan Eunice) (04/15/91)
Dick Dunn writes: jpe@egr.duke.edu (John P. Eisenmenger) writes: > ...As it turns out, IBM decided the standard Exabyte PROM was a bit > crufty so they replaced it with their own. A standard SCSI 8mm drive > will therefore not work with the RS/6000... I think "crufty" is a little more interpretation than the situation deserves. Would it be too cynical to suggest that they only wanted to support the drives they sell...and that the way to achieve this was to make the drives they sell incompatible with other 8mm drives? No, I'd say that's about the right level of cynicism to use regarding one's vendor. ;-) But, I'm not sure if "make the drives they sell incompatible..." is a fair description. I think what IBM did was to sell a specific 8mm drive with an AIX device driver for it. Exactly as DEC, Sun, etc do. If the drive or the device driver happen to be incompatible with the Exabyte driver, that's unfortunate, but hardly conspiracy. System vendors can't provide drivers for every XYZ add-on device on the market, or even all of the popular ones. Think about the *years* it's taken Microsoft to get its driver act together in the Windows market, where the requirement is much greater and the payoff is much higher. Third party hardware vendors are responsible for providing drivers for the platforms they want to sell on. Of course, IBM could make its customers happy by either providing a stock Exabyte driver, or by working with Exabyte to develop one Exabyte could provide. That's good business practice--and mandatory business practice in the UNIX/open systems world. Hopefully IBM will see this point; if they're having a little mental block at the moment, bring it forcefully to their attention. But I think if you look at other vendors, or read the Sun, DEC, etc newsgroups, you'll see that the "my vendor didn't provide the XYZ driver I need" story is pretty common.