Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:25:35 -0800 From: Darryl Okahata <darrylo@sr.hp.com> To: Michael Searle <searle@longacre.demon.co.uk> Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: onStream? Message-ID: <199911110125.RAA10387@mina.sr.hp.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:51:38 GMT." <19991111005138.43321@longacre.demon.co.uk>
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Michael Searle <searle@longacre.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Is the OnStream more reliable than a Travan? Because that is the only drive
> of comparable price and capacity that I've seen.
At this point, the jury's still out. One "interesting" point is
that there seems to be no cleaning cartridges (or foam Q-tips, etc.) for
head cleaning. I suppose you might be able to use the usual foam pads
w/pure alcohol (or other electronics-grade solvent), but I'd definitely
ask OnStream about it first, as the alcohol/foam could conceivably
damage the heads instead.
As for the "70GB" drive, the estimated street price is US$999 --
quite a bit higher than the current drives. (High as it is, the price
probably makes sense, given their competitor's comparable drives. It
doesn't help those of us who want cheap hardware, though. ;-)
I once thought about writing a userland driver for the SC30, but
it's a lot of work if you follow OnStream's programming guidelines. It
would be a lot easier to write a driver that didn't follow the
guidelines, but you'd then run into possible future compatibility issues
with newer drives. I got as far as reading data blocks off tape before
stopping work (at US$40/tape, I wasn't brave enough to actually write to
a tape, as I suspect that it is possible to trash a tape by writing bad
data to just the right location).
--
Darryl Okahata
darrylo@sr.hp.com
DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not
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