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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!nntp.teleport.com!netaxs.com!tezcat!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!svc.portal.com!opentext.com!yank.kitchener.on.ca!not-for-mail From: richw@yank.kitchener.on.ca (Rich Wales) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Colorado tape problems -- 2.1.5-RELEASE Date: 8 Sep 1996 17:36:29 -0400 Organization: Opinions expressed in this posting are mine alone Lines: 36 Sender: richw@dialup1.opentext.com Message-ID: <19960908210529.richw@yank.kitchener.on.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: opengate.opentext.com I recently installed FreeBSD 2.1.5-RELEASE on a 386DX/33 with 8 MB of RAM and about 380 MB on three hard drives. The system also has a Colorado "Jumbo 120" QIC-40 tape drive, accessed via the floppy controller. I have been using the "ft" program. It works, for the most part, but there are still some problems. The following sequence of device timeout errors -- fdc0: output ready timeout fdc0: input ready timeout fdc0: input ready timeout -- occurs at the beginning and end of each "ft" operation. I was able to fix the initial set of timeouts by increasing the wait loop counts in i386/isa/fd.c, but the final set of timeouts remained. Also, when running "ft" at the end of a pipeline such as this -- cd /; tar cf - . | gzip -c | ft "system backup" -- the "ft" hung in the middle after a series of timeout errors. I tried the same thing later, and it worked OK, but I'm not sure if this was because I had increased the wait loop counts or I just got lucky the second time. In any case, there would clearly appear to be a problem with the tape "close" code, since it's getting timeouts even with wait loops lasting several seconds. My "Jumbo 120" drive has firmware version 40, according to Colorado's DOS backup software. Rich Wales <richw@yank.kitchener.on.ca> http://yank.kitchener.on.ca/~richw/