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Date:      Sun, 13 Apr 1997 20:59:35 +1000
From:      Joel Sutton <suttonj@interconnect.com.au>
To:        Mike Berry <berrym@seas.upenn.edu>
Cc:        Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Floppy/Parallel tape drive with FreeBSD? 
Message-ID:  <199704131059.UAA09399@solsbury-hill.home>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 04 Apr 1997 21:47:20 PST." <Pine.BSF.3.96.970404214319.2591S-100000@localhost> 

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Mike

> On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Mike Berry wrote:
> > Hence, I want to buy one of the cheap FLOPPY or PARALLEL
> > interface drives.  Is it possible to use one of these drives?
> 
> Well, I can't guarantee it'll work, but there is a new improved floppy
> tape driver.  The original only supported QIC-40 & QIC-80. You can try the
> 'lft' driver, available at
> ftp://freefall.freebsd.org/pub/incoming/lft.tgz.  

I use a Colorado Jumbo 350 tape drive which takes QIC-80 tapes. I use 
the 170MB tapes and I haven't had any problems so far. I have also 
read reports of the Jumbo 250 working without modifications to the 
kernel. The lft program is a "must have" if you're going with a 
QIC-80 drive. 

> NO GUARANTEES THIS WILL WORK WITH YOUR TAPE!  They are highly propietary.
> SCSI tapes are the way to go, if possible.

I have to agree with Doug here but, on the other side, I do know how 
you feel about the cost. Cost made my decision for me - it was either 
QIC-80 or floppy disks ;->. It's worth thinking about because the QIC-80 
tapes are much more expensive than 4mm or 8mm DAT tapes, which can 
store gigabytes. 

If reliability/security is an issue then SCSI is the way to go. 

If you end up with a Jumbo 350, send me an email and I will forward you 
the patch to get it going with the 170MB tapes. 

Good luck. I hope this helps. Cheers, Joel...





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