From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Dec 20 01:51:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id BAA02631 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 01:51:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from sax.sax.de (sax.sax.de [193.175.26.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id BAA02598 for ; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 01:51:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from j@uriah.heep.sax.de) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by sax.sax.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with UUCP id KAA11630; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 10:51:25 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from j@uriah.heep.sax.de) Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.8.8/8.8.5) id KAA29224; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 10:41:08 +0100 (MET) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 10:41:08 +0100 (MET) Message-Id: <199712200941.KAA29224@uriah.heep.sax.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E References: <199712200743.XAA28993@foo.primenet.com> From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Subject: Re: Segate Tape stor 3200MB X-Original-Newsgroups: local.freebsd.hackers To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org cc: Simon Coggins Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk "Bryan K. Ogawa" wrote: > While I can't speak to the specific model you're talking about here, > generally speaking floppy tape drives are poorly supported or entirely > unsupported under FreeBSD. That's right. Further, the floppy controller hardware makes a rather poort tape interface hardware. You need to format your tape in advance into `sectors' (which takes a huge amount of time), and you're bound to the FDC clock rates that are used for floppies, thus only get the same basic speed as a floppy. In FreeBSD, currently only 500 kbps are supported as the highest rate, this yields something around 30 KB/s for a floppy disk. I doubt it will be much more for a `floppy' tape. Compare this to >100 KB/s even for the simplest SCSI drives, like an ancient Archive Viper 150, or to (180...) 300...500 KB/s for modern drives. > Most people instead recommend SCSI tape drives of some stripe or > another (Travan, 8mm, 4mm (DDS/DAT), DLT). I wouldn't even recommend any Travan tape. There have been a number of questions regarding the SCSI ones popping up in freebsd-scsi, and the net result is their SCSI firmware implementation is poor enough so you often can't call the result `SCSI' at all (since they violate things that are flagged `mandatory' in the standard). > If you're worried about price, www.corpsys.com, for example, often > sells referbished drives quite cheaply. See also Jonathan Breslers recommendation for a QIC drive in the handbook. I think it was a 1 GB drive (1.3 GB with XL cartridges), not too expensive, and damn fast. There are a number of happy campers using Tandberg drives (like me :), but these ones aren't what one would call `cheap' right away. But they are rock-solid, and that's what counted more to me. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)