*BSD News Article 21250


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From: steve2@genesis.nred.ma.us (Steve Gerakines)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: floppy tape driver
Message-ID: <CDoo0z.L7r@genesis.nred.ma.us>
Date: 21 Sep 93 02:53:22 GMT
References: <CDF0r8.2qF@csi.compuserve.com>
Organization: Genesis Public Access Unix +1 508 664 0149
Lines: 58

[ Missed the original post while the link has been down. ]

>>>M Foley says:
>>>Does anybody know if the floppy/tape driver source uploaded by Steve
>>>Gerakines on (or about) Sept 4 for 386bsd will work with the Colorado
>>>Jumbo tape drives? ...

I am using a Colorado Jumbo 250 attached directly to my floppy
controller.  This driver should be what you need.  As far as model names
go, Mountain manufactures the Summit drive, and Colorado makes the Jumbo.
Maybe someone could fill me in on some other compatible drive so I can
keep a list around.  If I could get manufacturer and model ID#'s, I
can patch up the attach code to report the correct name instead of
guessing.

>>Dave Burgess says:
>>There is a special driver for that controller, I think.  If it is going
>>to work with the compressing controller, it will probably look like one
>>of the wt driver devices.

I'm not familiar with Colorado's board, so I can't say how it would
behave with the driver.

>>The QIC-40 stuff would probably work for your drive, but you will need
>>to connect it to your floppy controller, which puts your tape capacity
>>at 40/60/80 megabytes instead of the higher capacity you are used to.

This is not necessarily true.  Even if you don't have the compression
card, you can still do software compression.  For example, if I use
CPBACKUP with the drive, even though I don't have a compression card,
the program will still write the volume using compression.

Someone had made the statement to me a while back that compression
isn't usually used with QIC-40/80, so I needn't been concerned about it.
After examining other people's tapes, pretty much the opposite is true:
some form of compression (either software or hardware) is almost always
used.  That's how Colorado gets away with claiming their QIC-80 drive
holds 250Mb, when in reality, without compression it only holds about
120Mb.

>I have no problem omitting the compression card and hooking the drive
>directly to my floppy controller. Do I understand correctly that this
>setup will work, or do I need a 'special driver' as mentioned in your
>first paragraph?

No, the posted driver should work fine so long as the drive is attached
to your floppy controller.  Did you have to assign an IRQ to the
Colorado board?  I'm just curious to see if the board behaves like
another floppy controller, or if it requires special programming.

>Thanks again - mfoley

Sorry I couldn't reply sooner by mail, your messages kept bouncing
on me.

Good luck,
- Steve
steve2@genesis.nred.ma.us