Ken Lowther wrote:
> Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> >
> > >
> > I do not know about your unit, but for my Conner Tape drive on a separate
> > CTC-2Mb floppy controller, I must reduce the transfer rate from 2000 to
> > 1000 to avoid shoe-shining. While the controller can keep up at the higher
> > speeds, my system is busy enough with other things (including Seti@home
> > running at nice 19) that the 166 MHz Pentium cannot keep up at the higher
> > speed. Since cron does the backups for me while I am asleep, the fact that
> > it does not run at top speed is not a concern for me. Possibly your
> > problem.
>
> I have nothing else running on my p90. This unit came from Seagate
> under the name Tape stor, but everything I have seen on it says it is a
> Conner. It is reconganized as such by all software that has recongnized
> it. Also uses the ctc-2Mb floppy controller.
>
> When I first got it, I could not get it to work well under dos or
> win3.11. When I downgraded to win95 it would not work under dos, but
> would do just fine under win95 gui. It reported a different address for
> the jumpers I had than the manual claimed it should be, but it was
> working. Of course, since it didn't work under the dos (text mode
> interface) it was a catch 22. When windoze crashed I had to reinstall
> windowz to do a backup. Of course if it wasn't for windoze I wouldn't
> need the backup. ;^)
>
> Guess I can try slowing it down. How do I do that?
Seagate bought out Conner some years ago. Diddle your /etc/conf.modules file.
Here is the relevant part of mine:
# Load ftape/zftape automatically
alias char-major-27 zftape
# use ftape-internal.o for /dev/qft0
options ftape ft_fdc_driver=ftape-internal,none,none,none
# use CTC-2Mb floppy controller
options ftape-internal ft_fdc_base=0x370 ft_fdc_irq=6 ft_fdc_dma=2 <---<<< Your
parameters may differ.
# make sure we have enough swap space. N.B.: swapout is not in /sbin.
pre-install ftape-internal /usr/bin/swapout 32 <---<<< I have 64 Megabytes RAM.
# Try to reduce overruns: can be [1-16]: higher: less overruns
# Try to reduce overruns: can be [0-15]: higher: less overruns
# Documentation says both: 8-(
options ftape-internal ft_fdc_threshold=15
# Set the maximum allowable data rate for the FDC. Must be one of
# 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, or 4000.
options ftape-internal ft_fdc_rate_limit=1000 <---<<<
For this line, the ...rate_limit is 2000 by default. While the tape drive and
controller are capable of that, my P166 is not reliably capable of keeping up,
so I slowed it down to 1000 (! Mb) and it works fine. I suggest you try that
speed first. With a P90, you just might have to go to 500, but I would not try
it unless 1000 does not work. Mine may restart a block once per entire pass of
the tape.
--
Jean-David Beyer .~.
Shrewsbury, New Jersey /V\
/( )\
Registered Linux User 85642. ^^-^^
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