SCSI tape drive

[Frank J. Edwards]

In article <211 at kas.helios.mn.org> rhealey at kas.helios.mn.org (Rob Healey) writes:
>	Does anybody know if the SCSI tape unit, 3070, is
>	capable of doing 60M format reads? Damn inconvenient if the
>	hardware can't...

Hmmm.  Most 120M/150M tape drives that I've dealt with (oh, maybe half
a dozen) will also READ 60M tapes, but won't write them (it will write
120M format on low density tapes but you don't want to do this -- read on).

As attractive as this may seem to be, you DO NOT want to consistently
put the 60M tapes into the higher density tape drives.  As a techie
from #m described it (paraphrased), "the 60M tape media is much more
coarse/brittle than the high density tapes and will eventually destroy
the tape heads".  Estimated elapsed usage time on the head before
repair:  1000 hours worth of READ's (it takes ~23 minutes to seek
all the way through 9 tracks of data on a 600' tape, ie. 2:20 seconds
per track).

>	................  Will UNIX support a SCSI tape unit, Archive
>	maybe, that WILL do 60M/150M?
>
>		-Rob

My Archive Viper 2150S (120M/150M SCSI tape drive) will read 60M format
tapes.  I have read such tapes, immediately transporting the data over
a network and onto another tape at 150M format.

Under AmigaDOS I have no problem selecting tape format, although the
Viper is intelligent enough to determine the proper format itself during
read operations.  Under Amix, only the 120M and 150M formats are currently
supported (V1.1).

I hope this helps.  If you've got other questions, you may consider reading
comp.periphs.scsi since there was recently a discussion concerning SCSI
tape drives and compatibility issues, including the 8mm drives.
-- 
Frank J. Edwards		|  "I did make up my own mind -- there
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