tapestreamer

[Jeff Mann]

In article <1991Jun3.235625.6822 at mauxci.uucp> dumais at mauxci.UUCP (Paul Dumais) writes:
>In article <1991Jun2.222552.28785 at intacc.uucp> mann at intacc.uucp (Jeff Mann) writes:
>
>[stuff deleted]
>
>>Since Apple has discontinued the SC40 tape drive, there are NO tape
>>drives available that support A/UX (or rather, A/UX doesn't support tape
>>backup), except for the DAT models.  This really pisses me off.
>
>Jeff, please check before you make such a bold statement.  A/UX does
>have tape drive support from a number of third parties and the formats 
>include more than just DAT.  Look on AppleLink under the A/UX Icon or call
>your dealer (in your case University Book Store, right?).  I found several
>backup solutions in the 1991 Macintosh Product Registry [start pp.356]. Check
>it out.

Do you think I haven't checked this problem out?  I've got 400 meg of
data on-line, and no backup method!  A summary of my search:

1.  I had an ad from Archive (that my dealer gave me) about a 150m
cartrige drive with A/UX support.  I ordered the drive through my
dealer.  "Huh?  This isn't a cartrige drive, its a cassette - and there's
no A/UX drivers..."  Several calls to Archive (now Maynard) and I was
told that the model I had really wanted was discontinued (and the model
number re-used on a different product, for some reason).  And that the
A/UX drivers were for A/UX version 1 only.  So I said, "ok, I want to
exchange this drive for a cartrige drive." They told me about the
MaxStream 250Q cartrige drive.  "Great I'll take it!  Does the A/UX
driver come with it, or is it separate?" "Well, uh, we don't have an
A/UX driver for it.  Sorry.  We'll give you a refund..." I sent the
drive back and got a refund. This was about a month or two ago.

2. I heard about how Micronet ships an A/UX driver (the one that Tony
Cooper wrote) free with their drives. Again, after several calls to
several different people in their tech support, I was told that Micronet
does not support A/UX except for DAT drives, and that Tony Cooper's
driver was not reliable with TAR or CPIO, and therefore they were not
shipping it and had no plans to.

3. I heard that Tony had made his driver available for ftp. But since it
had a time-bomb in it, and Micronet said it wasn't shippable, I didn't
consider entrusting my data to it.

4. I heard that the A/UX driver "unofficially" supported Archive drives.
Again, this seemed a little untrustworthy. I want my backup method to
at least be supported by someone, either Apple or the drive manufacturer!

5. I had my dealer do one more check on Apple Link for a solution. He
assured me that there wasn't one.

5. This is the point that I wrote the article saying there weren't any
tape (cartrige) drives. A logical and well "checked-out" conclusion,
considering the above experiences.

Since that time, I received a message from Tony Cooper, assuring me that
his driver works, and that Micronet should ship it.  He said the
problems with TAR and CPIO were A/UX bugs.  He gave me the name of
another person to contact there, which I haven't done yet.  So the jury
is still out on this one, in my opinion.  Not that I don't believe Tony
that the driver works, but I want it supported by the vendor.

I also insisted that my dealer send me a copy of all information on
Apple Link re.  tape drives. Although the Archive MaxStream 250Q is listed,
both myself and my dealer were told flat out that Archive did not support
the use of their drives with A/UX. (From their tech support, about a
month ago). I don't know who to believe.

I did manage to find *one* possibility that my dealer had missed - the
Hammer 250 from FWB.  FWB assures me that it is completely compatible
and reliable.  They offer an A/UX driver for $199.US., on top of the
$1799.US for the drive itself.  The driver alone is available for
$399.US.  It's somewhat more money than I wanted to pay, but it is the
only supported solution that I know of.  Of course, at this point I'm
not going to believe it until I see it...

>>The fact that A/UX doesn't support non-Apple hard drives (without using
>>SilverLining, etc) is inexcusable.
>
>This isn't true.  You can use the A/UX tools diskformat(1M) and dp(1M) to
								^^^^^^^^
>set up any drive.  As well most drives come preformatted so all you have
>to do is partition the drive.  That isn't too hard.  Finally, there are *many*
	^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Phooey.  It might not be too hard for me, having had four years behind
the console as sysadmin of various unix systems, but you can't be
seriously suggesting that the first thing a new A/UX user is going to
have to do is dive into the dp man page?  This topic has been beaten to
death in this group (and is currently being beaten once more).  It's not
a problem for me (I just got Silverlining), and it seems like Apple is
working on it for a future realease anyways.  I shouldn't have brought
it up.

>Jeff,  Tony Cooper has written a tape driver that is available on the Net.  The
>driver is A/UX 2.0 compatible and will recognize most tape drives.
(see comments above)
>
>Stay cool dude and check things out a little more before you say A/UX *can't*
>do something 'cause I bet it can.  

Well I admit that I may have gotten a little hot under the collar when
writing that article, but I think with good reason (not the least of
which is that I keep having nightmares of my disk crashing and losing
eight months worth of work... :-(

Paul, I don't want to flame you here, but as you can see I did check
things out quite extensively.  This isn't the first time you've tried to
tell me that my problems with A/UX were trivial or non-existant in this
newsgroup, and it's kinda frustrating.  I happen to pride myself on
being fairly thorough in my investigations (as you should know from the
long-winded reports I mailed you about getty and flow control) .  As
someone with "Apple Canada A/UX Specialist" in your .signature, I think
you ought to try to be a little more careful about being condescending
towards your customers, especially in a public forum like this one.

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