*BSD News Article 82488


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From: dgy@rtd.com (Don Yuniskis)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: whats a good external SCSI tape?
Date: 8 Nov 1996 01:13:35 GMT
Organization: CICDO
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <55u1fv$cgg@baygull.rtd.com>
References: <DzHp5B.6Bt.G.nanguo@nanguo.chalmers.com.au> <BZOzHFO.smartsignal@delphi.com> <55lovg$hs0@baygull.rtd.com> <55mshd$5oi@newsbr.eunet.fr>
NNTP-Posting-Host: seagull.rtd.com

In article <55mshd$5oi@newsbr.eunet.fr>,
Frederic MARAND <Frederic.Marand@osinet.fr> wrote:
>dgy@rtd.com (Don Yuniskis) wrote:
>
>>> Maybe it just sounds
>>>scary!  Wonder how nervous the anecdote driven would get if they really
>>>knew how DRAM worked?  Imagine all those precious bit patterns nestled
>>>in a matrix of myriads of tiny capacitors - Egads!  You mean my data has
>>>a time constant!  If some thing called refresh doesn't happen my bits do
>>>what???  Pass transistors?     Huh?  Oh well, back to work.
>See, the DLT cartridge is scary, rather more thand its drive mechanics
>: the tape can go out ! We had some questions about this aspect from
>our first DLT customers, who were afraid the tape would unroll and the
>end of the tape be damaged.

I think the biggest DLT problems are (in no particular order):
	- folks dropping cartridges
	- the tape "leader" (extractor?) breaking

>By the way, would anyone know why a DLT is much slower than a DAT
>using TAPEDAI.NLM on a NetWare 4.10 server ? It speeds properly with
>Seagate's Storage Manager driver, but only gives about 100 kB/s with
>the NetWare driver ! 
>
>I know this is not a Netware forum, but I found none, and Novell's
>only answer is: this is an unsupported drive and it does not emulate a
>standard SCSI tape very successfully. How is it supported on FreeBSD ?
>Any specific changes to the standard SCSI tape driver ?

If this is a significant issue/problem for you, perhaps try loading
a different set of DLT firmware -- one of the variants that more closely
resembles a DAT, etc.  (?)

--don