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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!noc.near.net!ceylon!genesis!steve2 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