Problem with 60 Mb Streamer under interactive

[Gary Coffman]

In article <129 at guug.guug.de> mcl at guug.guug.de (Clemens Martin) writes:
>Hi everybody.
>I don't know whether this is the right newsgroup to post this to
>(so please forward, or repost it where it would be right or just tell me)
>
>We are having trouble with an 1/4" 60 MB calipher streamer drive on an 
>standard PC runnig interactive IX.
>The drive is connected to an everex controller (830 / 833)
>We are using /dev/wt as device driver.
>
>The trouble we are having is:
>We can't read any foreign (ie. not on our machine produced) tapes.
>We can tar and untar locally and on my sun I can untar the stuff which was
>tared on the Unix PC. But the other way round does not work.
>
>Any hints, help, suggestions or anything else would be welcome.
>(Do I have to think of blocking factors or am I overlooking something 
>completely)
>
>Thanks Clemens
>
>mcl at guug.guug.de mcl at guug.uucp 
>Clemens Martin  Hochstr 19   D-8000 Munich 80  W-Germany +49 89 48 11 62

This is just a guess, but it could be a mechanical problem. Your drive's
head alignment could be out of standard just enough to keep you from
reading tapes made on another machine while reading it's own tapes fine.
I've seen this many times on floppy drives and I'm guessing that tape
drives are sensitive to alignment as well.

Gary