steve@nuchat.sccsi.com (Steve Nuchia) (02/09/91)
I need to specify a helical scan, 4 or 8 mm, scsi interface tape drive in 5 1/4 inch half-height form factor. Most of my experience is with the Exabyte (8mm), but I'm not real comfortable with the idea of cramming that much mechanism in a smaller package. I hear from sources I trust that format sanity and reliablity are comparable (4 vs 8), so the big issues seem to be scsi interoperability, mechanical reliablity, and price, in that order. The application will involve some units is a less-than-pristine environment (read: oilpatch) but the enclosure is full of normal (but carefully selected) PC type stuff already. The software environment is ISC 3.2ish, and we really want to use the scsi tape driver in the kernel if possible, otherwise a vendor supplied and supported driver compatible with the ISC disk driver is required. We're using the AHA1542[ab]. I would very much appreciate hearing asap from someone who has such a unit working and is satisfied with it in an ISC (Interactive 386) system. Barring that, any folklore, horror stories, or FOAF tales gratefully recieved. Summary forthcoming after the trickle dries up. Vendor personnel are welcome to make their pitches. Thank you. -- Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services (713) 964-2462 "Could we find tools that would teach their own use, we should have discovered something truly beyond price." Socrates, in Plato's Republic