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From: chapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Serial Port problems with microPort System V/286 2.2U
Message-ID: <321@fornax.uucp>
Date: Fri, 26-Jun-87 13:12:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: fornax.321
Posted: Fri Jun 26 13:12:31 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jun-87 01:00:19 EDT
References: <307@xios.XIOS.UUCP> <6102@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Distribution: comp.unix.xenix,comp.unix.questions,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: School of Computing Science, SFU, Burnaby, B.C. Canada
Lines: 58
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.ibm.pc:5131 comp.unix.questions:2985 comp.unix.xenix:415

> 
> In article <149@qetzal.UUCP> rcw@qetzal.UUCP (sysop) writes:
> >In article <318@xios.XIOS.UUCP>, greg@xios.XIOS.UUCP (Greg Franks) writes:
> >| In article <354@micropen> dave@micropen.UUCP writes:
> >| 
> >| Bell Technologies puts out a very nice QIC tape unit for the PC.  The
> >| controller takes a full slot.  [...] You
> >| can also get outboard QIC drives.
> >| 
> >
> >This is all very well and good, but why does it cost $2500? If 
> >Microport and Bell Technologies have a business relationship, why
> >would Microport kill that by supporting inexpensive tape drives?
> >
> Microport now has (at least at beta stage) drivers for the QIC-02
> controller (eg Everex Excell). If we get them and they work I will
> post it. They plan to charge a nominal update fee, so you will  have 
> backup for about $900 (less if you get a QIC-36 Archeive drive).
> 

Does anyone know which of the popular tape units have a full AT
interface? I took a look at an Archive unit the other day but it
is a PC interface card so you only get dma to the 1st mb of memory
which as far as I can tell means your driver will have to set up
buffers in low memory then copy the data from the existing buffer(s)
before initiating the transfer.  Aside from being messy it seems like
the extra overhead will make it less likely that you will be able to
keep the drive streaming.

Does the (Archive) QIC-36 above refer to the tape format (or something else)
or is it an alternative to the QIC-02 interface?

Is the Everex Excell the same as the Everex stream60 drives I see
advertised in magazines for about $700?

I have called Microport to see just which drives they plan to support
but all they could tell me were that they were Everex and Archive drives
- I wanted model numbers so I could get one now and know that it would
be compatible with whatever driver they eventually release.  Why do I
want one before they release a driver?  Because it could be a long time
before they do release it - I would rather spend my time trying to write
my own driver than backing up 100mb of disk to floppies.  At worst I
would have to wait until they can make doscp write to the hard disk
properly and then I will just use a 20 mb dos partition and do

tar files to be backed up | doscat ; boot dos ; backup file; reboot unix

ugly but still better than floppies.

Any help would be appreciated.
john

...{seismo,watmath,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!fornax!bby-bc!john

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