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From: krowitz%richter@umix.cc.umich.edu (David Krowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re:  Exabyte (8mm) on DN3500
Message-ID: <9003212054.AA07021@richter.mit.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 90 20:54:19 GMT
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Apollo only supports the Exabyte drive with the Omniback program.
Omniback uses a new magtape library which drives the Exabyte tape,
regular 9-track tapes, and (I think) cartridge tapes. *ALL* of the
other Apollo tape utility programs that I know of (wbak/rbak, tar,
rwmt, dd, etc) use the original magtape device library which supports
only 9-track and cartridge tape drives, not the Exabyte tape drive.

We purchased our Exabyte drive from Workstation Solutions. They
provided a magtape library which is automatically loaded before
you run a program and which makes the Exabyte drive look like a
standard 9-track tape drive using the older magtape library. Thus,
we can use wbak/rbak, rwmt, tar, dd, et. al. with our 8mm tape unit.

My information on the Apollo tape libraries is several months old
at this point. They may (or may not) have plans to merge the two
tape libraries in the future, but at this point it seems that only
the older tape library, which does not support the 8mm drive, is
shipped with the OS. The new library is apparently shipped with
Omniback (or is stored in a library whose name is not readily
apparent to me).


 -- David Krowitz

krowitz@richter.mit.edu   (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu
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