Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 19:50:34 -0700 From: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com> To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Tape drive questions/recommendations Message-ID: <199606170250.TAA25328@kithrup.com>
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>> My oldish DAT tape drive is dead. Bugger. >Sadness. What brand? How did it die? It *was* a modified Wang drive. It did not start out life as a SCSI drive -- there is a daughterboard attached to it with a SCSI interface. The scsi part seems to be what has died. I can put a tape in, and eject it by pressing the eject button, but it is not recognized by the 1542 during probing, and its access light (the only light it has ;)) never comes on. I figure that it is, basicly, dead. >> I can also get a Conner or HP DAT drive for <$600, new. Or I can get an >> ExaByte 2501 for a bit <$500. >Avoid Conner like the plague. Archive are OK, so are HP, so are Sony, so >are the WangDAT units. The Exabyte is a pretty OK unit, but the 8mm >mechanicals aren't quite as robust as the DATs. The ExaByte 2501 is, according to the freebsd hardware doc, not an 8mm drive. Merde merde merde merde merde. The Connor probably isn't, either, so that rules *that* out. That leaves the HP, which I *know* is a true DAT drive (I've had lots of experience, both good and bad :() with HP DAT drives. The Archive, again, I know nothing about, and Disk Drive Depot was closed today (bloody; I'll be going tomorrow). >We're using Sony SDT5xxx units without any grief here; I support several sites >with WangDAT units. The only problems they've had are that the units are >fairly touchy about clean power, and many external drive boxes are just too >rough on the 12V rail for their liking. Well, the Archive unit I saw was an external; other than that, I would prefer to get an internal unit (which is what my current [dead] drive is). One of my major concerns is price, obviously. The more I spend on a tape drive, the more of a problem I have with a monitor. NCA (a local store, for those who don't know ;)) has WangDAT units for close to $1k (a bit above it, I think). Sean.
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