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From: aslater@jocko.bri.hp.com ()
Subject: Re: whats a good external SCSI tape?
Sender: news@bri.hp.com (News User)
Message-ID: <Dztt3K.M08@bri.hp.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 09:59:44 GMT
Reply-To: aslater@jocko.bri.hp.com
References: <DzHp5B.6Bt.G.nanguo@nanguo.chalmers.com.au> <54dhae$3gs@uriah.heep.sax.de> <Dzn5KB.wB@yedi.iaf.nl> <nCMJr72@quack.kfu.com>
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Organization: Hewlett-Packard
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Lines: 36
Nick Sayer (nsayer@quack.kfu.com) wrote:
: Well, I happen to be a big fan of DATs. I have witnessed a decidedly
: non-trivial failure rate with 8mm (admittedly, this was with the
: previous generation of 8mm drives -- the full height ones with the
: flip-out door), but have never lost a bit off any DAT drive.
: I have seen the HP DATs work just fine under FreeBSD. HP has a habit of
: claiming there are "magic" switches that they don't document ("if you're
: using a Sun, set it like this", etc), which is a habit I despise
: (because invariably minority OSes like 4.4BSD are left off the list and
: because it presumes a lack of intelligence on the part of the user), but
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: the drive seems to work with the default settings. |
|
now that's really just a bit unfair. There's no implication to any of
users of the 'unsupported' OSes, be they Linux/QNX/BSD/OS/NetBSD/FreeBSD
or whatever. If you mean that there isn't a full nine yards of explanation
of the switches, then that isn't in the install docs for a reason --
MOST people DON'T want to buy a peripheral and get the SCSI reference for it.
They just want to plug it in and go, or as near as you get to that sort
of thing on Un*x boxes...
[btw - the switches are there for good connectivity reasons to do with vendor
driver/scsi behaviour...]
We do document the switch settings FWIW -- http://www.hp.com/go/dat
and follow the Unix Install links. If you are interested in what
a given set do, ask and I'll forward on the details.
PC based Unices play ball with the standard set of switch settings,
if you need to plug it into Sparc boxes with NetBSD or similar,
life might get a lot more interesting (one of these days I'll get
round to it).
cheers,
al
(not speaking for HP..)