On Wed, 21 Jul 1999, Michael Tibor wrote:
| Does anyone have experience with the Sony SDT-7000 4mm DAT drive on a
| Linux box? Mine refuses to write more than 4GB to tape, and seems to be
| stuck at a density of 0x13 (ie, trying to do a "mt setdensity 0x24"
| fails with "/dev/tape: Input/output error", with /dev/tape being a
| symlink to /dev/nst0). This is with RH 6.0, kernel 2.2.10ac10, and an
| NCR 810 adapter.
I have an SDT-5000 (DDS2) and an SDT-9000 (DDS3) with the same problem.
Both refuse to allow density to be set to DDS2 or DDS3. On the 5000, my
backups top out at around 3.5 GB (not the 4 GB maximum). If I insert an
uncompressed DDS2 tape written from an HP drive, it cannot recognize it.
| There is also a tiny 4 position dip switch which Sony refers to as the
| "UNIX Compatibility Switches", but nothing I've seen from the docs that
| came with the drive, nor from Sony's Faxback service describe the
| switches in any greater detail than that.
My 5000 doesn't have those, but my 9000 does. The Unix documentation they
have on their support site says that switch 4 can be turned on to enable
variable mode. On or off hasn't made any difference for me.
| Does anyone have any ideas how I might set this silly thing so it'll
| write more than 4GB?
I wish. I just bought the 9000, and have a support contract on it, so
I'll be contacting Sony to see what the deal is. I'll post my findings.
-James
