Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 05 Nov 1997 08:16:01 -0800
From:      "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net>
To:        Chris Stenton <jacs@gnome.co.uk>
Cc:        hardware@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Seagate 24GB DAT drive 
Message-ID:  <199711051616.IAA10547@MindBender.serv.net>
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 05 Nov 97 10:05:52 %2B0000. <199711051005.KAA00479@hawk.gnome.co.uk> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

>I have just got hold of a Seagate 24GB DAT drive and have come across an
>interesting problem in that it works fine for blank tapes and can read tapes
>produced on my old HP DAT but I can't  write onto any of these old tapes. Even
>mt erase does not work. It seems that if there is data on the tape it looks for
>a special marker at the beginning of the tape; if it does not find it it gives 
>a
>media error. Is this a problem with all Seagate DAT drives or just the 24GB
>version?

Check your manual.  It's probably not reading a marker on the tape.
DAT tapes have identification holes so the drive can tell what type
and density they are.  My DDS-2 drive won't write on pre-DDS-2 tapes
unless I throw a special jumper -- it will normally only read them.
Your drive is probably doing the same thing -- only reading older
lower density tapes -- and writing to only the correct (DDS-3?) tapes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                           michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
      Contract software development for Windows NT, Windows 95 and Unix.
             Windows NT and Unix server development in C++ and C.

        --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
    NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
        Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
    NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199711051616.IAA10547>