Exabyte tapes incompatible from 3.5 to 4.0?

[Lorenz Fish]

in issue v7n97 Celeste Stokely asks the musical question
> Is there a driver for this tape drive I can
> get from somewhere that will solve this problem?

We are using an Exabyte from Delta Microsystems (Livermore, CA) to do
backups for a small group of various Sun machines.  It hangs on the SCSI
port of a diskless 3/50 and (obviously) talks over the network to get to
filesystems on our few diskful machines.

We got the machine just before planning to "upgrade" from SunOS 3.4 to
4.0.  Without a whole lot of trouble we were able to backup the entire
server disk set, install 4.0 (repartitioning etc.), cross our fingers,
reinstall the 8mm drive drivers and remake the 3/50 kernel and presto:
restore the whole shootin' match.  Bottom line is this can be done and it
isn't too painful (anxious maybe!).

The Delta Drive comes with a basket of useful software besides the
requisite UNIX drivers.  This includes a reasonable diagnostic program but
most important is a full-blown remote backup facility they call 'bud'.
With it you can construct a complete backup schedule for dump or tar type
activity and fire it off with your rc.local.  

The tech support people at Delta are outstanding!  They were patient and
thorough with all the questions I had for them (even through pinning a
problem down to a flakey 3/50 SCSI port).  They were willing to stick with
me until the problem was solved.

I recommend the Delta 8mm drive from my experience.  I like the machine, I
like the software, I like the company.  Their software works as described.
The hardware seems tough but we've only been messing with it since
November.  I have no affiliation with Delta or its distributors except as
a satisfied customer.  You can call Delta at: 415-449-6881.  In this neck
of the woods (NY) the distributor is Peripheral Devices 215-640-0446.

	Lorenz Fish	  uucp:...sun!gotham!marine!fish
	Technical Analysis Group
	Marine Midland Bank
	Manhattan