Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 13:06:25 -0800 From: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <cschuber@uumail.gov.bc.ca> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, Simon Coggins <chaos@ultra.net.au> Subject: Re: Segate Tape stor 3200MB Message-ID: <199712232107.NAA00838@cwsys.cwsent.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 20 Dec 1997 10:41:08 %2B0100." <199712200941.KAA29224@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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> "Bryan K. Ogawa" <bkogawa@primenet.com> wrote: > > > While I can't speak to the specific model you're talking about here, > > generally speaking floppy tape drives are poorly supported or entirely > > unsupported under FreeBSD. > > That's right. Further, the floppy controller hardware makes a rather > poort tape interface hardware. You need to format your tape in advance > into `sectors' (which takes a huge amount of time), and you're bound > to the FDC clock rates that are used for floppies, thus only get the > same basic speed as a floppy. In FreeBSD, currently only 500 kbps are > supported as the highest rate, this yields something around 30 KB/s > for a floppy disk. I doubt it will be much more for a `floppy' tape. QIC-40 & QIC-80 drives are pretty flakey too. I had three drives that wouldn't work in my old place because of the moisture. Since moving the drives worked. > > Compare this to >100 KB/s even for the simplest SCSI drives, like an > ancient Archive Viper 150, or to (180...) 300...500 KB/s for modern > drives. > > > Most people instead recommend SCSI tape drives of some stripe or > > another (Travan, 8mm, 4mm (DDS/DAT), DLT). > > I wouldn't even recommend any Travan tape. There have been a number > of questions regarding the SCSI ones popping up in freebsd-scsi, and > the net result is their SCSI firmware implementation is poor enough so > you often can't call the result `SCSI' at all (since they violate > things that are flagged `mandatory' in the standard). > > > If you're worried about price, www.corpsys.com, for example, often > > sells referbished drives quite cheaply. > > See also Jonathan Breslers recommendation for a QIC drive in the > handbook. I think it was a 1 GB drive (1.3 GB with XL cartridges), > not too expensive, and damn fast. There are a number of happy campers > using Tandberg drives (like me :), but these ones aren't what one > would call `cheap' right away. But they are rock-solid, and that's > what counted more to me. > > -- > cheers, J"org > > joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE > Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-) > Regards, Phone: (250)387-8437 Cy Schubert Fax: (250)387-5766 UNIX Support OV/VM: BCSC02(CSCHUBER) ITSD BITNET: CSCHUBER@BCSC02.BITNET Government of BC Internet: cschuber@uumail.gov.bc.ca Cy.Schubert@gems8.gov.bc.ca "Quit spooling around, JES do it."
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