Irwin Magnetics (was A/UX on third-

[goldfarb at hcx9.UCF.EDU]

<awaiting more flames...>

Irwin Magnetics, a Division of Cipher Data Products, seems to have the
best all-around tape backup devices for Macintoshes.  However,
regarding A/UX support for the 5080 drive, I must be the object of a
giant practical joke by Irwin because everybody else seems to be able
to buy A/UX software and I don't!  They've agreed to give me a beta
release of the A/UX drivers and utilities for testing and they've 
warned me about data loss, etc. etc.  etc.

WHERE IS EVERYBODY GETTING THEIR COMMERCIAL RELEASES OF THIS STUFF?  
ARE THERE *two* IRWIN MAGNETICSES?

A while back, in another message thread (A/UX on third-party drives...), 
I wrote:
	<bla, bla, bla>
	local dealer and told them to do the work of calling Irwin to smoke out
	the information.  The response was that although there is no software
	support for A/UX at present, it is being worked on.

To which I received the following impassioned response:
	Say WHAT?????
	...
	They now have a 120MB unit which works at about 4MB/min. I have used this
	device under A/UX- they wrote their own driver (the only way to do it). It
	is really nice software- if you invoke it interactively, it has a real Mac
	user interface, with powerful selection capabilities (file name, date, last
	backup time, etc. etc. matching), but it can also be invoked from a shell
	<bla, bla, bla>

Another response from elsewhere corroborated this opinion (although the above
opinion was expressed several times by its author, which might have confused
the issue).

So tell me....where is everyone getting this stuff and why don't the Irwin 
software people (the horse's mouth, so to speak) know that marketing is 
selling their beta software as finished goods?  I don't think we're 
irresponsible rumor-mongers here so maybe I'm talking to the wrong people.
Someone needs to point me in the right direction.

<*preemptive context switch*>
On another note, is anyone up for an A/UX BOF at the upcoming Balto USENIX?
I know *I* am!  How 'bout chairing it, Alexis?  Say WHAT?????

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Ben Goldfarb				uucp: {decvax,peora}!ucf-cs!goldfarb
University of Central Florida		Internet: goldfarb at hcx9.ucf.edu
Department of Computer Science		BITNET: goldfarb at ucf1vm.BITNET
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