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From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
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Subject: Re: bt946C card hangs reading 4mm tape written on Solaris machine
To: harlan@pfcs.com
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 12:14:38 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Questions)
In-Reply-To: <199606050436.AAA27230@clark.net> from "Harlan Stenn" at Jun 5, 96 00:36:04 am
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Harlan Stenn writes:
>
> I wrote a tar file to a 4mm exabyte(?) DAT drive attached to a Solaris
> machine.  I verified the tape's content.
>
> I put the tape into a Connor (Archive Python) DDS-2 4mm drive, and tried
> to read it.  The BT946C controller hung.  Eventually, I got a SCSI abort
> message, which timed out to a controller abort command, which never
> finishes, either.  The only solution is to hit the reset button.
>
> Sorry I don't have a better description of the abort messages; they go to
> the console but never get logged anywhere because the SCSI controller is
> hung!
>
> Two questions.
>
> 1) How can I read this tape?  I haven't had problems reading 4mm tar tapes
> written on a few other platforms.

Possibly with a different controller.  I've seen this with BSD/OS as
well.  It seems to happen with marginal tapes.  Possibly a different
tape drive would help too.  Can you still read the tape on a Solaris
machine?

> 2) Can something be done to prevent the SCSI controller from hanging in
> this case??

Possibly.  I can't comment.

Greg