Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 08:23:17 -0800 (PST) From: Greg Lehey <grog> To: BRETT_GLASS@infoworld.com Cc: hardware Subject: Re: Recommend 8mm exabyte drives? Message-ID: <199701131623.IAA19631@freefall.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <9700118530.AA853030305@ccgate.infoworld.com> from "BRETT_GLASS@infoworld.com" at Jan 11, 97 05:12:08 pm
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BRETT_GLASS@infoworld.com writes: > > > As a bitten child (I'm currently returning my repaired 8500 because it > > still didn't work right), I'm not convinced. > > Perhaps the person who repaired your drive did not do it properly. I think that's a foregone conclusion. > > Note also that I've been told by product experts that you should only use > > original Exabyte or Sony (same thing, different label) cleaning tapes. > > As long as the cleaning cartridge has a ratchet to keep tape from being > re-used, it'll work fine, regardless of brand. Of course, the "product > experts" are a bit biased in favor of the ones they sell. This would be a reasonable first assumption. In this case, though, the claim is backed up by a better explanation: the other cleaning cartidges allegedly leave a film of something behind on hte head. > > At least Tandem supports only DDS drives. I'd guess that HP does the > > same :-) > > I used HP systems with Exabyte drives long before DDS. I stand corrected. Do they still supply them? > > But why do you need a driver? On the systems I use, I can > > replace a DDS drive with a QIC-525 or an Exabyte, and I don't need to > > tell the software anything. > > If you stick to the most generic SCSI tape commands, nearly anything will > work. But if you want control of compression, etc., you want a driver that > understands what can be done with the medium and the drive. This is true of > DDS, too, if you want to use some of the niftier random-access features. OK. Under FreeBSD, I believe you can do these things with the mt command. > > You might check the Exabyte web pages, though--you can pick up firmware > > upgrades that might solve this problem. > > Will have to check on this. The older Exabytes used somewhat "dumb" SCSI > chipsets, though (even now, there aren't many good ones available for > targets). So it may not be possible to keep the drive from ignoring SCSI > commands while it's working. I picked up an upgrade for my 8500. Haven't done anything with it yet. Greg
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