From owner-freebsd-hardware Wed Dec 13 06:09:55 1995 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id GAA11956 for hardware-outgoing; Wed, 13 Dec 1995 06:09:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from duncan.cs.utk.edu (DUNCAN.CS.UTK.EDU [128.169.94.83]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id GAA11942 for ; Wed, 13 Dec 1995 06:09:52 -0800 (PST) From: kschmidt@cs.utk.edu Received: by duncan.cs.utk.edu (cf v2.11c-UTK) id JAA29959; Wed, 13 Dec 1995 09:09:51 -0500 Date: Wed, 13 Dec 1995 09:09:51 -0500 Message-Id: <199512131409.JAA29959@duncan.cs.utk.edu> To: hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Tape drives: any new support soon? Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Greetings, I have a few of questions about some tape drives/tape formats that I'm thinking of purchasing soon, specifically those that have the floppy interface (I'm not quite ready to go SCSI just yet). >From what I've gathered from the FAQ, only QIC-02 and QIC-40/QIC-80 tape formats are currently supported (for non-SCSI systems). I'm wondering: 1) Will there be support for tape drives that use the QIC-3010/QIC-3020 or the TR-1/TR-3 tape formats? 2) Can any tape drive that is read/write compatible with the QIC-80 format be used currently, or is support for the "designed" format of the tape drive a necessary condition? I.e., could I currently use a Travan tape drive (designed for TR-1 tapes) using QIC-80 tapes? 3) Will there be support for tape drives that use a parallel port interface (using any of the above mentioned formats)? By "Will there be support for ...?", I mean "Are there any plans (or rumors of plans) for any support in any upcoming release (even as far away as FreeBSD 3.1.4) for ...?" If there's need for further clarification, I'll do what I can. My knowledge of tape drives is about one week old, and I still don't understand everything involved. Thank you for any information you can give me. -Ken Schmidt