paulp@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Paul Perlmutter) (03/07/90)
Original-posting-by: paulp@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Paul Perlmutter) Original-subject: Re: Any software support for Exabyte tape system? Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) The 7.0 release of HP-UX for the S300 supports the new 4mm product. The 8mm Exabyte product which has been on the market for somewhat more than a year is now being aggressively challenged by a variety of 4mm vendors - including HP. I doubt if you could claim it is the "defacto" standard. It merely had the lead, which I believe will erode quickly given the advantages of 4mm. In a very short time, 4mm should be out-selling 8mm. Will Exabyte work with 7.0? It has not been carefully tested on HP-UX systems. But Exabyte does claim to support the SCSI I standard. The S300 HP-UX tape driver is a full implementation of the SCSI sequential-access standard. I personally would not use any sequential access device on any earlier release of HP-UX (6.5 or earlier). It is not supported, it is documented to avoid doing this, and problems could very well be anticipated. > HP has a DAT tape recorder with a SCSI-interface but can I use it in > any other system (as we may want to do) than in a HP? Any experience > of this one? The HP DAT device should plug-and-play with most host systems that implement the SCSI sequential acess protocol. You could run into problems if the tape driver in these systems took advantage of any vendor-unique commands that are available on Exabyte, or QIC tapes. My experience is that drivers distributed from host systems will plug-and-play fairly well, while drivers for Exabytes distributed by 8mm VAR vendors will use Exabyte vendor-unique functionality, and consequently will not work with HP's DAT. Cheers, Paul Perlmutter paulp@hpfcla