Tape drives & Xenix

[Tom Yager]

I posted a message about this before, so if it all sounds familiar, it's
not deja vu.

I purchased an Irwin 40MB tape drive for my system before I had a chance
to discuss with anyone how well supported they were by Xenix. The drive
works fine (no errors yet) and is fast, but I need a drive that supports
tape positioning and permits multiple archives on one tape. It is my
plan to use tapes as my software/news archive as well as conventional
backup.

I recently got a chance to purchase either an Archive or Wangtek drive,
with the controllers recommended by SCO, at an excellent price. I'd like
to be more cautious this time, so I ask Xenix users who use this combination
(preferably 20MHz 80386 + SCO Xenix + Archive 60MB, but close will do) to
respond with their general review and a few specific answers:

1) Does the "tape" command work as advertised, permitting the writing of
and skipping to file marks? Do "skip to file mark" operations go quickly?
2) Does the append option (r) of tar work?
3) Is there any C function call support for the tape drive? I know that some
Unix tape drivers permit IOCTL calls to position the tape, rewind, etc.
4) Does it have problems running on a 20MHz machine? (the Irwin does, at least
prior to update K)

In its defense, I must say that the Irwin is a good, fast, well-built drive.
It works great with MS-DOS (as often as I use that!) and zips through con-
ventional backups with no trouble.

In case anyone's interested, I might offer the Irwin to someone looking for
a cheap, simple backup device. Otherwise, I'll hang onto it so I can juggle
files between drives. The Irwin is less than 6 months old, has 5 tapes and
the original box and manual. It is in new condition. Toss me a price if you
like.

In any case, thanks to all for any assistance.
(ty)


-- 
Tom Yager, Apollo Computer
ARPA: tyager%maxx at m2c.m2c.org -or- tyager at apollo.com 
- My opinions are mine, all mine. Nyah. -
"I like life; it's something to do."