Tape Drives as a Network Resource

[ginosko!cg-atla!weber at cs.utexas.edu]

In article <1938 at brazos.Rice.edu> you write:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 152, message 7 of 12
>
	Much stuff deleted
>
>Yes, I can work around this:  I have a couple of machines with small
>busses (read: 4/110s) that I could probably sacrifice for this cause.  I'm
>looking for a more interesting (and general) solution, though, if one
>exists.
>

The idea of a dedicated machine is a good one and easy to do.  Your choice
of hardware is not so good.  There is a problem in the 4/100; its a
dedicated bus master.  That means no other DMA devices on the bus like
disk controllers and tape controllers.

I think that a 3/140 running 3.2 or 3.5 would be faster and besides it
would work with a controller.  Don't worry about extra memory, the 4MB on
the carrera is enough for tape backup.  We have a few of these machines
running as network bridges and doing tape backups.  Works just fine.
BTW-a 3/140 with 3.2 is faster on the VME bus that the 4/anything running
4.0.  That's what you want for tape backups.

Regards, Jeff Weber