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From: morris@dms.UUCP (Jim Morris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Colorado Mag Tape driver for SYSV/386
Message-ID: <1017@dms.UUCP>
Date: 19 Mar 90 18:25:35 GMT
References: <2321@promark.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Atari Games Inc., Milpitas, CA
Lines: 31

From article <2321@promark.UUCP>, by mark@promark.UUCP (Mark J. DeFilippis):
> 
> Just a note.  We have 6 - 8 of these drives at various locations/clients.
> The first drivers we got were ver 2.02.  Problem... The kernel paniced
> and crashed abruptly.  The tapes would write fine, but when you read them
> back, they crash with an error 12.  The manual states this is related to
> the Reed-Solomon ECC.  In any case, a few months ago I called yelling
> about the problem.  It existed on 4 different manufacturer's 386 boards,
> two flavors of Xenix, and 3 versions of xenix.  All exhibit the same
> problem.
> 

I have a Jumbo tape drive running on Xenix 2.3.2 Using the 'standard" QIC-40
driver supplied with Xenix. It seens to work fine. I have never had a crash,
although I do get an error the first time the drive is accessed after a boot.
After that error everything works fine. I don't doubt that CMS's driver is buggy
but if you can use the one supplied with Xenix what is the incentive for them
to fix it?? :>)

It would be nice if they would supply enough info for us to write our
own drivers, but like everyone else who tried, I was told that they could not
supply any info. I really don't like dealing with a company that is so
uncooperative, I probably won't buy any more of their drives because of that.
It is worth paying extra to deal with a responsive company!!
Anybody know of a "responsive" tape drive manufacturer???

-- 
Jim Morris.         {motcsd|weitek}!dms!morris or morris@dms.UUCP 
Voice	(408) 434-3798
Atari Games Corporation, 675 Sycamore Drive, Milpitas CA 95035 USA
(Arcade Video Game Manufacturer, NOT Atari Corp. ST manufacturer).