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Date:      Sun, 21 Feb 1999 20:23:59 -0600
From:      Dan Nelson <dnelson@emsphone.com>
To:        Greg Black <gjb@comkey.com.au>
Cc:        David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>, Jon Drukman <jsd@gamespot.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: tape drive position
Message-ID:  <19990221202358.A45583@dan.emsphone.com>
In-Reply-To: <19990220020117.4326.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au>; from "Greg Black" on Sat Feb 20 12:01:16 GMT 1999
References:  <199902200040.SAA81105@nospam.hiwaay.net> <19990220020117.4326.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au>

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In the last episode (Feb 20), Greg Black said:
> > The only way I know to ID a compressed tape is to put it in a DDS
> > drive which doesn't support compression and see what happens.  Same
> > for Irix and FreeBSD.
> 
> One problem with the method is that, on several BSD variants and with
> at least two brands of DDS-1 (no compression) drives, what happens is
> a system lockup.  This is the only thing (apart from my own
> stupidity) that has ever forced me to reboot a BSD system.

I've got an old DDS-1 drive that likes locking up on compressed tapes. 
If I listen to the drive during the "lockup", it sounds like it's
retensioning the tape; seeking BOT to EOT and back again over and over. 
there's nothing BSD can do at this point; the drive is completely
unusable. I usually end up having to open the case and unplug the power
from the tape drive.  The entire machine reboots maybe 1 out 10 times I
do this.  The other 9 times everything goes back to normal and I can
continue using the drive (with a different tape of course :)

sa0 at ahc0 bus 0 target 3 lun 0
sa0: <ARCHIVE Python 25947-XXX 2.49> Removable Sequential Access SCSI-2 device 
sa0: 5.0MB/s transfers (5.0MHz, offset 15)

	-Dan Nelson
	dnelson@emsphone.com


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