Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brtph3!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Myths about tape block sizes
Keywords: Hardware
Message-ID: <997@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 31 Dec 90 23:57:34 GMT
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In article <986@brchh104.bnr.ca> dan@breeze.bellcore.com (Daniel Strick) writes:
>The 63 kb limit for mag tape is actually arbitrary ...

Actually, no:  it came from tape controllers with 16-bit count registers,
which were still relatively common not long ago.  (The Xylogics 472 that a
lot of Sun 3s shipped with has a 16-bit count, for example.)

Agreed that it is silly to impose such limits on hardware that doesn't
need them, like properly-implemented SCSI controllers.

"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry