Mystical Parameters for 8mm Drive Sought

[Eric W. Ziegast]

In article   writes:
>This is a repost from the article I sent to alt.sys.sun and
>comp.periphs.scsi:

Dump parameters listed only.

>	dump 0usdf 6000 54000 /dev/rst1 /home
>	dump 0ubdsf 126 6250 28633 /dev/rst0 /dev/rxy0
>	dump 0fubsd /dev/rst2 100 6000 54000 /dev/sd0g
>       dump 0ubdsf 20 54000 6000 $tapehost:$tapedrive $fsname
>	dump udbsf0 6250 100 36000 /dev/nrrt0 $filesystem

After my last post to one of the newsgroups on this subject, I decided to
call a company selling Exabyte drives (Perfect Byte) and asked what their
opinions/recommendations are.  They recommend like many others that you
use 54000 density and a blocking factor of 126.  The 6000 is only for the
(Sun) dump program which only uses it for dump estimates.

I learned some other things during my conversation about the Exabyte 8200.

The drive itself gets its own information on tape length and other info
about the tape *from the tape itself*.  So it can tell whether you're
using Sony 112M, TDK or whatever.  So if you buy different tapes, the
Exabyte will know how to handle each one.

The "mt eom" command does not work under SunOS 4.*.*.  The fault is on the
part of the Sun st device driver.  Perfect Byte has a device driver for
SparcStations which is more "intelligent" for Exabytes (mt eom will work).

There's a new model 8500 out there being tested.  It takes a slightly
larger than average tape, but it stores much more data per tape length
than the 8200.

Eric W. Ziegast, University of Merryland, Engineering Computing Services
ziegast at eng.umd.edu - Eric@[301.405.3689]