CMS Jumbo Tape on ISC2.2 finally works

[Michael C. Murray]

In article <122 at stratsft.UUCP>, 
...uunet!basfpac!stratsft!dwayne writes:
>In work I do with Chrysler, we are evaluating ISC UNIX as a possible
>platform for software development.  Our hardware is mostly IBM PS/2
>Model 80's, with a few AT style machines thrown in.
>
>We have received ISC UNIX 2.2 for evaluation, and in going over the docs
>which came with it, we discovered that Interactive claims to support
>the Colorado Memory Systems JUMBO tape drive, as well as other QIC-40
>tape drives, thru the ftape program.
>
>After a great deal of experimentation, I have come to the conclusion
>that "You can't get there from here."
>
...
>
>Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

After much mucking about with this device, I broke down and bought CMS's
driver for $120.00 (The Xenix/386 Unix Jumbo Tape Driver, Version 2.44) for
my ISC 2.2 machine.

At first, the installed package did not work. I kept getting a "Error while
opening /dev/rjt1" message when trying to access the device. The CMS support
people suggested that the product was linking in to the kernel with a wrong
major device number for the drive. Sure enough, after backing the package out,
changing the "jt_Major" parameter to 1 in the /etc/conf/pack.d/jtape file and
relinking the kernel the package works, and works quite well.

The CMS folks say that the Jumbo drivers supplied with ISC, etc. work only
with "firmware" dated July 1989 or earlier (firmware being their drive).

The menu driven interface works just like the DOS version, and you can store
DOS and unix archives on the same tape cartdrige. I haven't tried reading
DOS tape archives onto a unix drive or vice/versa yet, though. I backed up
a 60 Mb unix partition in what seemed like about 40 minutes and achieved a
compression ratio of about 1.7:1. 

It still bugs me off that one has to pay $120.00 to get their device to work
with unix, and I have not (as yet) gotten the driver to work with Xenix (the
kernel relink keeps bombing). 

I should also mention that their unix support is available via an 800 number
and I found them to be fairly helpful.

Good luck.
>
>========================================================================
>..!uunet!basfpac!stratsft!dwayne
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Dwayne Bailey      +  Strategic Software is ME, so my opinions ARE those
>Strategic Software +  of my company!
>========================================================================

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Michael C. Murray			NCR NPD, St.Paul, MN (612) 638-8393
mike.murray at stpaul.ncr.com 		...!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrstp!ncrons!mikem

			Envision World Peace.
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