Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!pan!jw
From: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt
Subject: Re: Reading/Writing foreign QIC formats !@#$?
Keywords: Tape compatibility Sun AIX RT
Message-ID: <548@pan.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jul 89 09:22:05 GMT
References: <12656@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Adasoft AG, Solothurn, Switzerland
Lines: 17

In article <12656@well.UUCP> gors@well.UUCP (Gordon Stewart) writes:
>I have been told that the IBM format is not compatible with any of
>the QIC formats - can this be?

While this is not exactly true, it does highlight one of the stupidest
mistakes that IBM has made on the RT.  They released a new tape drive
recently, called the 6157-002.  This drive can *read* QIC-11, QIC-24
and QIC-150 (I think that's right - the high density 150Mb format).
But it can ONLY write QIC-150!  This means that systems with the new
tape drive are incompatible with RTs that have the old tape drive -
it is absolutely impossible to write a tape on the new drive and read
it on an old one.  Then, to top it off, they dropped the old drive
from the price list, so you can't buy it any more even if you want
to!  Thus they are saying that you either have to buy incompatible
systems, or just give up buying RTs altogether.  Sigh.

jw