Date: Fri, 17 May 96 16:40:08 EDT From: gtc@aloft.att.com (gary.corcoran) To: scsi@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Exabyte Tape Drive Firmware Message-ID: <9605172040.AA02005@stargazer>
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=> That's surprising. SCSI-2 has precautions for downloading firmware => (it's done via a WRITE BUFFER command), so i wonder why they didn't => pick this route? I know that at least the Exabyte 2502 drives do use => WRITE BUFFER. = =Picking the WRITE BUFFER route would require them to support N operating =systems and M controllers, it is much simpler for the vendor to support =a ``stuff this tape in your drive and magic will happen''. It works no =matter what OS your using, and no matter what controller. = =Archive/Conner does this for the Python DAT drive series as well. I'm curious about two things: 1. Does anyone know if the HP DAT drives are upgradable in this magic way? 2. Is the magic something proprietary to the particular hardware vendor, or is there some special (but standard) SCSI tape code, for example, that is used to signal "internal firmware upgrade" when read from a tape? Thanks, Gary
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