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From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: GPIB device (Tape) driver (or source examples)
Message-ID: <1991Feb1.175121.28765@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Date: 1 Feb 91 17:51:21 GMT
References: <1991Feb01.045229.5835@eecs.wsu.edu>
Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
Lines: 31

In <1991Feb01.045229.5835@eecs.wsu.edu> rnelson@eecs.wsu.edu (Roger Nelson - Grad Student) writes:

| -------
| 
| Does anyone have a GPIB device driver for IRIX (on a 4D/60T)?
| 
| Specifically we have a HP 9-track HPIB tape drive which we would like
| to use to load GIS map data.  It would be nice if we could use this 
| drive without having to set up our old HP1000 system.
| 
| I might be able to write a driver if I can find suitible documentation
| or example source code.
| 

SGI sells a GPIB board made by National Instruments (GPIB - 1014), and a
driver to go with it.  The driver is a generic gpib driver, and part of
the product is an interface library.  It should be fairly straightforward
to write a program that accesses the tape drive with this approach (I
would suspect a few days should be enough for basic functionality).

Of course, this may not be the cheapest possible solution :)

National is also selling a SCSI to GPIB interface box,
and we have Geometry Partners who have used the generic scsi driver (ds)
to talk to GPIB devices such as scanners with it.  I have no idea what
performace or price is like, or how hard it is to program it.
--

	Dave Olson

Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.