Pre-formatted tapes for HP drives

[Stephen Rickaby]

In article <26007 at teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> mkhaw at teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Mike Khaw) writes:
><274 at istsists.ca>, by mathieu at ists.yorku.ca (Pierre Mathieu):
>> Question 1) Is it possible to load tapes into this drive that
>> 	    are not pre-formatted and format them from HP-UX?
>
>Not that I know of; in fact, if you write onto a pre-formatted tape
>from a non-HP drive (e.g., a Sun) you destroy the formatted track(s?)
>and can no longer use the tape in the HP drive.

Can't remember which HP drives you are talking about, but I once loaded a
DC600 which had been bulk erased into a 7914 on an A900.  It was
spectacular.  The tape whizzed about a bit while to controller looked at
it, then there was a long pause for thought, then the drive hung, hanging
the disc (shared HPIB controller) *and* the CPU.  (Users of A-eries
machines will know that system crashes are *rare*, as opposed to some
operating system :-) ...)

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