From: heflin@ponca.dupont.com (Roger Heflin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: SPARC compatible tape units?
Date: 21 Aug 92 14:36:40 GMT
Organization: Du Pont Experimental Station

jeff@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Jeff McAffer) writes:

>	<1992Aug20.104745.22330@spectrum.xerox.com>
>Sender: news@kei.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Usenet News System)
>Reply-To: jeff@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
>Organization: University of Tokyo, Good Times Department.
>Lines: 35
>In-Reply-To: braven@rx.xerox.com's message of Thu, 20 Aug 1992 10:47:45 GMT
>Nntp-Posting-Host: ingrid

>In article <1992Aug20.104745.22330@spectrum.xerox.com> braven@rx.xerox.com (Brian Raven) writes:

> >>>I would like to get a tape drive for a 486/50 which can read and write
> >>>SPARC 150 MB tapes.  Is there such a thing?  If so, a name and model
> >>>number would be good.  Perhaps even a cool ultra-cheap discount
> >>>mail-order place that sells them.  Any experiences are also
> >>>interesting.
> >>
> >>Well I connected a SPARC 150MB external streamer (archive viper 150) to my PC
> >>via an Adaptec 1542B SCSI controller and can extract data of the tape using
> >>ASPITAR or SYTOS.
> >>
> >>Davei

>Just to be clear about what it is that I orginally wanted to do.  I
>need something, anything, that will let me read and write SPARC
>*format* tapes.  Basically this will be used as a file transfer media.
>Actually, I just assumed that 150MB would be the most available
>format.  Any size over about 60MB would be fine.

>Can I assume that ASPITAR writes with suitable format and block size
>such that my Sparc can read it?  vice versa?  Is SYTOS required?  Are
>ASPITAR and SYTOS are PC programs?

>As a final note, it would seem that I am not seeing some of the posts.
>There are replies to replies to my messages which I have never seen.
>Heaven forbid that I actually ask for more news to read but since
>people are taking the time to respond to my queries it would be good
>if I saw them.  I suspect that some people's 'distribution' is getting
>set to USA or something.  Please set it to 'world' (or whatever the
>appropriate everyone setting is).  Thanks.
>--
>atode, |m         -- "What happened to all my disk space?"
>                     "I hear Mike took it."
>                     "Bastard!"

there is some software you can get on SIMTEL20 or any of its mirrors which
will work for part of what you want to do.  I have a QIC-525 drive on my
486-33 running dos and can read QIC-150/250 tapes that were written on a
SPARC 150MB tape drive.  I have not been able to write QIC-150 tapes on
the PC side.  I believe it is a software limitation since I have seen the
same drive on a Unix machine write QIC-150/250 tapes.  From what I have 
seen any of the commercial packages will not work.  All of the ones that
I have seen use their own formats and refuse to read data not in their
format.  The package on SIMTEL20 is in the msdos.dskutl directory and is
called gtar100.zip and works fairly well except for writing 150MB tapes
on a 525 drive.  If you were using a 150/250 MB drive on the PC there
should be no problems with it.  I have transfered back and forth 525MB
tapes to QIC-525 drives.

 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware