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From: "Michael L. Squires" <mikes@copper.ucs.indiana.edu>
Message-Id: <199612281411.JAA00255@copper.ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Firmware of Cheap DAT autoloaders
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 09:11:45 -0500 (EST)
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After some discussion with Seagate technical services, which was quite
helpful:  the 4584NP and 4586NP DAT autoloaders from CSC and JEM (at
least the ones we've seen) have not been updated by the vendor to the
current firmware version.  The upgrade is in the form of a DAT tape
which upgrades the firware in flash memory.  Seagate feels that the
update is the vendor's responsibility but will ship the tape to a
third-party customer on a case-by-case basis.

The changers as shipped work with FreeBSD (2.1.6; AHA 1740A BIOS rev 1.35) 
but may be the source
of catastrophic damage to mounted filesystems which occurs when a bad
spot is found on the tape.  They also work under NT 3.51 (sorry:-) ) 
but are picky about tapes; they work fine with ARCserve 5.01g under
Novell 4.1 with patches (really sorry :-)).

(This is apropos a message posted some time ago regarding these changers).