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Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 20:56:53 -0400
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Subject: Re: tape (sa0) on sparc64 ?
From: Zaphod Beeblebrox <zbeeble@gmail.com>
To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@freebsd.org>
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On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@freebsd.org>wrote:

> On Thursday, 16 May 2013 at 19:56:14 -0400, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
> > On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Bob Bishop <rb@gid.co.uk> wrote:
> >> On 16 May 2013, at 21:51, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
> >>
>
>
[about my tape drive not working]


> The obvious question: can you write tapes and read them back?  My
> experience with DDS tapes was of extreme unreliability.  The age
> doesn't make things any easier.
>

 Well... therein lies my other suspicion.  I don't have any DDS4 tapes to
try writing, but the DDS3 tapes I have fail to write.

... but they don't even try.  The tape spools up when inserted and "mt
offl" works (ejects the tape) and the drive doesn't indicate any error at
this point --- but it doesn't even try to start moving for either read or
write.