Kennedy Tape Drives

[Christopher North-Keys]

David Gootwassink was wondering about attaching Kennedy 9300's to
Sun-4/260's.  Sun told him to order a Xylogics 472, which doesn't sound
real hot.  Here's a hopefully-relevant accounting of our (likely slightly
younger) Kennedy.

We've a Kennedy 9660 1/2" tape drive connected to a Sun 3/150 SunOS 4.0.3
via Ciprico VMEbus Tapemaster 3000 controller (Kennedy's number was
(perhaps is) (818)357-8831.  Ciprico's is (612)559-2034.).  The Ciprico
controller is not directly supported by Sun (last time checked), but came
with a decent set of kernel mods.  CAVEAT:  make root backups on a native
tape drive, if possible---it's less than fun to discover the root backup
is not accessible without the additional objects which just happen to be
on the root backup...

-----anecdote about Kennedys.

We had an interesting, worsening problem with a failure in the auto-loader
mechanism.  Kennedy wanted fare, room, board, parts, and labor to fly
someone out to fix it which would likely have run over $1000.  Two of us
thought this was ridiculous and narrowed the problem to tape slippage on
the auto-loader takeup reel.  They didn't seem to want to send a new reel.
We observed that the surface had been smoothed by wear against tape over
the years and considered sandblasting the reel to regain friction.  No
luck--- the shop was closed.  Brainstorm ensued:  I suggested trying
something tacky.  My partner in crime christened the approach something
like `adhesive fricative resurfacing film' and ye olde Scotch tape was
promptly applied.

Works like a dream.