Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!mimir!hugin!augean!idall
From: idall@augean.OZ (Ian Dall)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Accessing a VAX tape drive from a S
Message-ID: <390@augean.OZ>
Date: 9 Sep 88 12:33:46 GMT
References: <711@auvax.UUCP> <43200035@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu> <3463@phri.UUCP>
Reply-To: idall@augean.OZ (Ian Dall)
Organization: Engineering Faculty, University of Adelaide, Australia
Lines: 15

In article <3463@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>	The heart of the matter.  You get records on the tape exactly as
>long as the byte count you pass to write(2).

My QIC-24 streaming tape drive (and I suspect most others) always
writes 512 byte blocks. Writes get cached in the drive itself. If you
don't write fast enough the drive will stop streaming and backtrack
but the record structure will be unaffected.



-- 
 Ian Dall           "In any argument there will be people on your
                     side who you wish were on the other side."
idall@augean.oz