HP 7980S scsi 9-track

From: Fred N. van Kempen <Fred.van.Kempen_at_microwalt.nl>
Date: Thu Oct 3 04:42:00 2002

> > Bear in mind that you'll need some fairly specialized (and
> expensive --
> > in the $300 region) software if you want to use that drive
> on any sort
> > of PC.
>
> Someone should have warned me about that before I started
> using one with no special software whatsoever. :-)
>
> It responds to plain old SCSI tape commands, so any software
> that talks to SCSI tape drives should work.

Yeah :)

I wrote my own ASPI layer for both DOS and Win32, and developed
a bunch of tools around them to handle the reading, writing and
archiving of tapes of various sorts. Kinda nice, because I can
read in magtapes, store them in a single formatted file, enter
the info on the tape label, and then let it sit on my server, or
email it around. Later, one can re-write a tape using that file.

The drawback is: many tapes [worldwide] have decided to gather
up and move themselves to Holland, to find their eternal piece
in archived format. In other words... gawd, I still have a PILE
of tapes to go....

Anyway. The toolkit runs under most UNIXes, too, so no problems
there.

The 7980S is actually connected to a MicroVAX 3100 running Ultrix,
and that box is my fast-tape-reader. Nice! It responds fine, no
extra stuff needed.

Cheers,
        Fred
Received on Thu Oct 03 2002 - 04:42:00 BST