Help on tape drive interoperability/reliability

[Rajeev Seth]

I was going to get an Everex 60MB tape backup for my Interactive Unix 2.2
running on a 80386 PC, with these characterstics:
	writes QIC-24 format on DC600 tapes on an OEMd
	Wangtek 5099 drive.
My question is that if tar has been used
to write the tapes is it sufficient to take the tape across to the other
machines/unixes such as 386/SCO Unix, Sun/SunOS, Esix, etc., put it in
another QIC-24 reading tape drive
that is attached to the machine and be able to read it in OR do I have to have
an EXTERNAL Everex drive which I will physically lug from one system to
another and read back the tapes from it. 

Everex tech support told me that it is not good enough that two different
tape drives/machines read/write QIC-24 because the controller card for the
drive has some security PAL chip that attempts to make sure data is read
back on the same machine it was archived from. Do you guys find this to be
true with other brand drives or not?

Thank you for helping me make sense out of this undocumented world of
compatibility and interoperability issues for tape drives. If it really
not so compatible then I would probably buy a cheaper 40 MB floppy tape
drive (such as Colorado Jumbo). What is your experience with those. Are
those any less reliable?

--
Rajeev Seth 
IND, HP, 19420 Homestead Road, MS 43LH, Cupertino, CA 95014
Tel: (408) 447-3573
Unix mail: ..!{hplabs, uunet}!hpindbu.cup.hp.com!rajs