From owner-freebsd-hardware Wed Nov 10 17:25:48 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from atlrel1.hp.com (atlrel1.hp.com [156.153.255.210]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A5F4114DA6 for ; Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:25:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from darrylo@sr.hp.com) Received: from postal.sr.hp.com (postal.sr.hp.com [15.4.46.173]) by atlrel1.hp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BF06F6E6 for ; Wed, 10 Nov 1999 20:25:37 -0500 (EST) Received: from mina.sr.hp.com (root@mina.sr.hp.com [15.4.42.247]) by postal.sr.hp.com with ESMTP (8.8.6 (PHNE_17190)/8.7.3 TIS 5.0) id RAA16613; Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:25:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (darrylo@mina.sr.hp.com [15.4.42.247]) by mina.sr.hp.com with ESMTP (8.8.6 (PHNE_17135)/8.7.3 TIS 5.0) id RAA10387; Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:25:35 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199911110125.RAA10387@mina.sr.hp.com> To: Michael Searle Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: onStream? Reply-To: Darryl Okahata In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:51:38 GMT." <19991111005138.43321@longacre.demon.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.108) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:25:35 -0800 From: Darryl Okahata Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Michael Searle 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 constitute the support, opinion, or policy of Agilent Technologies, or of the little green men that have been following him all day. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message