Exabyte tape drive & SunOS 4.0.3

[Jeff Weber]

In article <709 at brazos.Rice.edu> rjj at mssun7.msi.cornell.edu (Rich Jaenson) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 91, message 7 of 16
>
>I just upgrade the system from SunOS 3.5 to SunOS 4.0.3.  At the same
>time, our department bought an Artecon 8mm tape drive. I connect the tape 
>drive to a 3/50. All dumps are remote. Here comes the odd
>things. I can dump the files and there is no error reported.  But I can
>.....

I am not sure about the specific error message you have, but here is my
experience with a Delta Microsystems 8mm tape.

I put it on, installed the driver and would have problems with the drive
prematurely thinking it was at the end of the tape. Apparently when a read
occurs, and 0 bytes are returned, it assumes end of tape. The problem
turned out to be a bad(?) or flaky SCSI port on the 3/50 itself. It worked
functionally, but a random times, it would read 0 bytes and think it was
at end of tape.

Putting the tape on a different 3/50 cured the problem.

Russ Poffenberger
Schlumberger Technologies
poffen at sj.ate.slb.com