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From: jerry@heyman.austin.ibm.com (Jerrold Heyman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: Non-IBM 8mm Exabyte on RS/6000???
Message-ID: <3493@awdprime.UUCP>
Date: 13 Sep 90 16:25:26 GMT
References: <1990Sep12.192939.5099@cc.ic.ac.uk>
Sender: news@awdprime.UUCP
Organization: IBM AWD, Austin
Lines: 43

In article <1990Sep12.192939.5099@cc.ic.ac.uk> cmaae30@uk.ac.ic.cc (Thomas Sippel - Dau) writes:
>In <1990Aug28.175456.24603@cimage.com> Brian Kelly writes:
>> Has anyone tried to plug a non-IBM supplied Exabyte into an RS/6000?
>> Should this work?   Is there anything special about IBM's Exabytes? 

[... description about what happens when a S/6000 is powered up ...]

>
>You must therefore define the other attributes and add them to the object
>database before your RISC System 6000 will make the device available to you.
>The trouble is: The documentation about odme, omadd & friends tells you all
>about how to create your own object data base, and how to generate attribute
>definitions, and other things you may never have dreamt of, for your object
>data base, but it does not tell you which attributes are used in the 
>Object Data Base and what significance they have.
>

To determine what the attributes are that are used for the devices, you will
find two object databases in /etc/objrepos that should be perused.  These
databases are PdAt (for Predefined Attributes) and CuAt (for Customized
Attributes), to peruse them use the 'odmget' command.  'odmget' outputs to
standard out the contents of ANY odm database in a stanza like format.  This
will show you what various attributes are, and what the current values are
for them.

As for what would be necessary to make the requested tape drive work, thats
an area I know nothing about.  I've never written a device driver for any
Un*x based system - nor do I know what is required to write one for AIX.  But
the information that is necessary for configuration manager can be accessed.

[... description of why tape drives work as they do ...]

>I will post a suitable description file once I have found the exact
>parameters - I will have to do similar over the next few weeks.
>
>                         Thomas 

jerry heyman
--
Jerry Heyman                     IBM T-R: jerry@heyman.austin.ibm.com
AWD Tools Development            VNET   : HEYMAN at AUSVMQ
AWD Austin                       T/L    : 793-3962
*** All opinions expressed are exactly that - my opinions and NOT IBM's