*BSD News Article 62631


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: APS HyperQIC SCSI Tape drives
Date: 20 Feb 1996 00:55:41 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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References: <4g10oh$345e@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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mccrobi@ibm.net writes:
> I have an add for APS HyperQIC SCSI tape drive.  Are ALL SCSI tape drives
> supported under FreeBSD.  I would assume so since their seems to be a SCSI
> command set for tape drives.  Any comments on the brand?

Basically, all drives are supported.

I would have said the above until 2 months ago, when trouble reports
about the new Exabyte EXB-2501 series popped up.

People usually get nothing but controller timeouts for the drive.  I
have learnt it the hard way (by supporting a FreeBSD ``customer'' via
the Internet) that Exabyte didn't get it right to implement SCSI.
Sigh.  They simply don't answer a MODE SELECT command, no error, no
response at all.  Unless you happen to have a _formatted_ cartridge in
the drive!

About the most weird interpretation of SCSI i've seen so far.

(For the EXB-2501 victims:

	scsi -f /dev/rst0 -s 600 -c "4 0 0 0 0 0"

will format your cartridge.  Don't try *any* mt(1) or other tape
operation before!)

Apart from this, most of the other SCSI tape drives seem to work fine.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)