150 Mb Archive Viper can't write 60 Mb tapes???

[Karl Denninger]

In article <6925 at scolex.sco.COM> md at sco.COM (Michael Davidson) writes:
>
>bill at twg.UUCP (Bill Irwin) writes:
>>The sould of this when I heard it was so absurd I just had to ask the net
>>right  away.   We are just installing an Archive Viper 150Mb  tape  drive
>>into  an i386 running SCO UNIX (current release).  One of the technicians
>>said  that  it could read 60Mb tapes produced on a 60Mb streamer, but  it
>>couldn't produce tapes that could be read by the 60Mb.
>
>I'm afraid that your technician is absolutely right....
>A 150 Meg drive will ONLY write 150 Meg tapes.
>The 150 Meg drives are *supposed* to be able to read 60 Meg
>tapes, but "your mileage may vary" on this one so be sure to
>check this out with some sample 60 Meg tapes written on the
>60 Meg drives that you actually care about BEFORE you
>get yourself into a dire emergency when you actually
>need to read 60 Meg tapes.

Incorrect.

150MB drives will (all, from my experience):
1) read 60MB tapes
2) Read and Write 120MB and 150MB tapes (the difference is in the TAPE; the
   drive senses the distance between the start-of-tape holes to determine
   the density and length). 

This has been true with both QIC02 and SCSI interface units on ISC.  If SCO
doesn't support this then they've gone way out of their way to break it,
since you don't have to do anything special with any other system I've ever
used to make this work (including Suns).

--
Karl Denninger
karl at kbox.naitc.com
(708) 317-3285