On Sun, 4 Apr 1999, Sergey Svishchev wrote:
> G'day,
>
> Yesterday four geeks (including myself) had tried to convince a HP 88780
> 9-track SCSI drive (cleverly disguised as Tandem 5160) to accept 6250 bpi
> tapes. It works OK at 1600 bpi, but refuses to admit it knows about 6250:
> "mt setdensity 3" on a Linux box results in "Incompatible media installed"
> error (when the tape written at 6250 bpi is loaded.)
>
> The problem is: no docs. By playing with front panel buttons, we
> discovered lots of interesting knobs to turn (CONF 40..199), but weren't
> inclined to try them all. What CONF will allow 6250 bpi density to be
> used? Or is it permanently disabled by Tandem-customized firmware?
>
>
You didn't mention which kernel you're running or the host adapter. I think
there have been quite a few improvements to the st and scsi drivers in the
2.2.x kernels. Upgrading to 2.2.1 solved a lot of tape problems for me--none of
them fatal, but all of them frustrating, like failure to properly detect EOD,
EOT, etc. It might be a good idea to have a look at
/usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi/ for any readmes on your host adapter.
--
David Wollmann
DST / DST Data Conversion
http://www.ibmhelp.com/
Received on Tue Apr 06 1999 - 18:07:38 BST