8MM Drives

[hart]

Does SGI or anyone with SGI gear have recommendations for third-party
8MM tape drives for backups?

It appears that SGI has them for the "tower" systems (like 4D/240),
but not in an external form factor to use as plug in SCSI add-ons for
(in my case ) PI's.

Is it true that Exabyte is the sole source for 8MM transports in North
America, regardless of the vendor name on the box??

If the above is true, there should be little if any compatibility problems;
right????

I'd like names and numbers of vendors, along with comments, recommendations
and flames.

If netters could reply via E-mail, I'll summarize and post.  For replies
here, read it yourself!!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In a related matter, we took an Archive 150MB QIC drive from MaxStream
for the Mac (Identical in all observable ways to the SGI external 150MB
tape from Archive), hooked it up to a PI, and, while it kinda worked,
it was certainly not reliable enough to use for anything valuable.

Any ideas on why this is/was???


=================================================
Michael G. Hart
David Taylor Research Center
Bethesda, MD
ph 202-227-1979         mhart @dtrc.dt.navy.mil
-------------------------------------------------
Secretary Cheney speaks for the Navy, not me!
-------------------------------------------------