A3070 Tape Drive programming

[Masaru Sugai]

In article <1991Jun19.100002.26682 at NCoast.ORG> lesle at NCoast.ORG (David A. Lesle) writes:
>Is there any way to program the A3070 tape drive to read tapes
>of lower density than 150M?  I have several tape cartridges with
>tar files from a Sun system circa 1989 that I would like to read.
>
>I remember that the Sun had several different devices depending
>on which density you wanted to read, but I can't find anything
>like that in the UNIX documentation.  I'd like to do this under
>either AmigaDOS or UNIX so any help would be appreciated.

  This is a sort of gripe on A3070. I bought mine in April, but it turned
out that there is few programming info in the accompanied booklet. I asked
around on several nets when I came across several problems on trying to
use it as a tape drive for other platform including AmigaDOS. I'm partly
successful to use it as 150MB streamer, but I'm not sure if I really take
advantage of maximum performance.

  Some guy suggested me a possibility of undocumented dip switches and
vendor specific SCSI commands, but I couldn't find anybody who had
experience with CALIPER 150. I have no idea who OEMs this drive even though
it's made in Japan! 

  If AmigaUX is to be release as a software product and A3070 is the only
officially supported tape driver, many users would be no choice but to buy
this drive, even though there are no support for AmigaDOS. Methinks the 
advantage of Amiga is powerful hardware and rich PDS, and it's quite
wasteful for both us and CBM not to release programming info at large.
Or should I have opted for WangTek or Archive ? But I might have hassle 
in case of AmigaUX as well.  I would like additional doc for my A3070 too.

>David Lesle                uucp: ncoast!lesle
-- 
-- Masaru Sugai:Use disclaimer. CIS 72050,2141:NeXT + A3000 = money-eater
NEC Corporation:sugai at ccs.mt.nec.co.jp DORMANT:hardwired logic,machine language
MIT R.Affiliate:masaru at media-lab.media.mit.edu:  "Silicon on Sapphire" by CLASH