From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Mar 28 00:11:19 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id AAA07650 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 28 Mar 1996 00:11:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from nixpbe.pdb.sni.de (mail.sni.de [192.109.2.33]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA07633 for ; Thu, 28 Mar 1996 00:11:10 -0800 (PST) Received: (from nerv@localhost) by nixpbe.pdb.sni.de (8.6.12/8.6.12) id JAA04373 for hackers@freebsd.org; Thu, 28 Mar 1996 09:10:37 +0100 Message-Id: <199603280810.JAA04373@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> Subject: Re: Can't read this stupid DAT tape - ARGH! To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Thu, 28 Mar 96 9:07:40 MET From: Greg Lehey Cc: hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) In-Reply-To: <2504.827920421@time.cdrom.com>; from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Mar 27, 96 1:53 am X-Mailer: xmail 2.4 (based on ELM 2.2 PL16) Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >> Might this be a DDS-2 tape (high density recording) trying to be read by >> a DDS-1 tape drive? > > That's a good point - I had forgotten that there were two varieties. > > My drive probes as: > > (ahc0:3:0): "ARCHIVE Python 28388-XXX 4.98" type 1 removable SCSI 2 > st0(ahc0:3:0): Sequential-Access density code 0x13, drive empty > > And the tape was written on an SGI Indigo 2, not that I have any idea > what kind of tapes those use. I'm pretty sure that this is a DDS-1 drive without compression. I've always had problems with SGI boxes because they didn't understand my compressed DDS-1 tapes. The machines I used were also Archive Pythons, but I can't remember the model number. > Any clues as to how to find this kind of information out? At a guess, if the tape driver complains about overlength errors, it can read the tape. The obvious way to find out, though, is to look at the cartridge: usually in the top right hand corner, there is a sequence of three or four symbols that after some examination can be considered to represent the letters "DDS", possibly followed by a "2". The other way is the length of the tape: 60 and 90 m are DDS, 120 m is DDS-2. Greg