Cartridge Tape Units

[Quentin_Conner]

bruce at mdi386.UUCP (Bruce A. McIntyre) writes:

[stuff of my own deleted]

>The update drivers for the short ARCHIVE board are available from either
>ARCHIVE or from SCO.  You only have to request them, and the update disk
>is available.  I have done this several times when upgrading an SCO system
>from XENIX286 to XENIX386. You do NOT have to upgrade from 2.2.x to 2.3.x
>as the drivers will be linked into the current kernal on installation of
>the drivers.  It is then included when you configure the tape drive.  I use
>Interrupt 5, as I don't have either a bus mouse or a second parallel printer.

>The drivers built into the kernal for 2.2.x are for the LONG Archive controller
>but you still need to configure it manually.  You cannot use the autoconfigure
>mode, you must set the parameters when installing the drivers.  Note: The DOS
>program delivered with the ARCHIVE drive will not work on a machine running
>at a clock speed faster than 8-10 Mhz, but the XENIX drivers will work on
>machines up to 20Mhz at least. (I have not tried it on any faster machines)

Okay, how about 2.3.2?  Do drivers for the short ARCHIVE controller board
come with release?  Or do I have to specifically request them?  When I ran
"mkdev tape" I specified a type "A" controller, Interrupt vector 5, and
base address of 0x200.  This works with devices /dev/rct0 and /dev/rct2
which apparently have different formats.  They both seem to have a capacity
of ~10 MBytes on a 600 ft tape.  I have the short controller board and model
60 drive.  It is supposed to store 60 MB on this length tape.  Well, I went
ahead and ordered the new release so I will see if it is any better, besides
it will be nice to get HDB uucp with the 'e' protocol anyway.  That way I
can take advantage of my 9600 baud MNP6 modem with my uucp neighbors.  BTW,
the machine in question runs at 16 Mhz and the fastape programs seem to work
with DOS.

Also, as if this wasn't enough rambling, I am hoping that 2.3.2 will cure a
bug with installing a Wyse WY-995 multiport serial card.  When it's
driver is linked with the kernal, upon booting I will get a message from
running "logger /dev/error /usr/adm/messages" in /etc/rc something like:
logger: read error - bad device.  Oh well, my machine never has errors
anyhow. :-)

Quentin
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