Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!nosc!crash!ncr-sd!blkhole!donp From: donp@blkhole.UUCP (Donald Phillips) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: A2091,A3000 SCSI Controllers Message-ID: Date: 31 Dec 90 04:28:03 GMT References: <18453@shlump.nac.dec.com> <1990Dec22.175133.4591@javelin.es.com> Lines: 46 >In article <1990Dec22.175133.4591@javelin.es.com> blgardne@javelin.es.com (Blaine Gardner) writes: > >Earlier this week I had Viper QIC 150 meg tape drive and a WangDAT 3 >gigabyte DAT tape drive working with Tabu on my A3000. It looks like >there's a problem with Tabu, because with both tape drives a few files >were not restored, and none of the datestamps were preserved during >restore. Still, it was very encouraging that both the QIC and DAT tape >drives ran on the first try. I also tried an Exabyte 8mm drive, but it >wasn't even recognized by the system. I have hooked up an Exabyte 8mm tape unit via a GVP controller. I'm trying to adapt the BTN tape handler that was posted within the last two months. The GVP controller recognizes the drive (at least the amber light flashes :-) and I can read the device information, but that is about as far as I've gotten. The only documentation that I have for the Exabyte drive is the manual that documents the various SCSI commands. It doesn't give an example of what a driver might look like. The distributor (for Sun) says that it just uses the standard SCSI tape driver supplied by Sun. This, of course, was a tremendous help. Calls to Exabyte gave me the response of "We sell the hardware, we don't know anything about the software necessary to operate the drive". Not that this really suprised me. I did determine that the capacity is derived in a different manner than the BTN handler was using and recompiled the handler to take this into account. I've now got the handler reporting that it has "opened" the tape, but it later fails with an I/O error on the DoIO (?) call. I might be wrong about the call name. Its been a couple of weeks since I last had time to play with it. I strongly suspect that nothing is really being written to the tape yet. Does anybody have an example of an Exabyte tape driver, written in any human-readable language that they might be willing to share? Alternatively, could somebody point me to something that might give me a better clue as to what the Exabyte drive is expecting as far as the SCSI sequence is concerned? BTW, the Exabyte drive works just fine on a Mac IIci with one of the standard backup programs, so I am fairly confident that the drive itself is OK. >--- >Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108 >blgardne%javelin@dsd.es.com ...dsd.es.com!javelin!blgardne (I hope) >{decwrl, utah-cs}!esunix!blgardne >DoD #0046 My other motorcycle is a Quadracer. BIX: blaine_g __ Donald Phillips ...!ncr-sd!blkhole!donp Research Unlimited Escondido, California