"John J. Boris, Sr." wrote:
>
> I have been struggling to get the Ditto Max and Ditto Dash combination in
> my server to work but have hit a wall every turn I have made. My system is
> a Cyrix 150+. The kernel version is 2.0.36. The ftape version is
> 4.03-pre-2. The isapnptools is version isapnptools-1.17-1. When I compiled
> the ftape modules I did not see any errors but when I reboot the server I
> get unresolved symbol errors. I have reinstalled RedHat twice but I still
> cannot get this to work. What I need to know is how do you configure the
> Ditto Dash Card?
> Since the floppy controller sits at 0x370 and IRQ 6 how can the Dash card
> reside there?
> Will this combination actually work or should I just go out and buy a SCSI
> tape system?
>
> At one point in this venture I actually got the drive to eject the tape. I
> also kept getting messages that the device was write protected. In
> var/log/messages I did get a message that the cartridge was not formatted.
> So I went and bought new tapes and got the same message.
If you have any possible way to retire the Max and buy an ATAPI or SCSI
tape drive, I recommend that you do so. In fact, you mention that this
drive is in/on a server ...? Insight.com has the Seagate 4GB Travan
ATAPI drive for around $245. This drive stores 4GB uncompressed per
tape and moves data at a consistent 550K/sec.
Otherwise, here's the scoop -
The Cyrix PR150+ is actually a 120MHz part. On systems slower than
166MHz true speed (Cyrix PR200+), we have found that the interrupt
latency or the ftape/DASH combo is high enough to cause massive
underruns when using the DASH DX/Max combination. This then drives the
throughput down below 140K/sec and results in even lower throughput if
your data is in small chunks (i.e. a big group of .html files).
As for the DASH settings, the floppy IRQ and DMA can be shared, you just
can't write to tape and floppy at the same time.
As for the symbols issue:
1> Make sure you match the module symbols setting in your kernel build
to the settings in the MCONFIG file. If you turned on Module Version
Symbols in the kernel config, you need to say CONFIG_MODVERSIONS=y in
MCONFIG.
2> Make sure you are using at least modutils 2.1.85 (from the
kernel/v2.1 tree on your favorite kernel site)
The isapnp version you list is good.
--
Tim Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Vice President Visit our tape backup web pages:
Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc. http://www.estinc.com/
