This was sent to me privately, but doesn't look like Eric copied it to the list. On a side note, everything seems rare and expensive compared to DDS media, which will probably always be cheap and widely available. Even media for the newer DDS-3 and DDS-4 formats seem to be going for close to a dollar a gigabyte here in the U.S. (if you account for a 2:1 compression ratio). That's a third to a fifth what I can expect to pay for Ditto Max media, and probably at least half what you'd pay for (the very similar but somehow less expensive) TR-4/5 media. Also, I gather DDS drives are supposed to have more sophisticated and reliable tape-and-head alignment mechanisms, and can do very fast compression automatically in hardware. Although brand new DDS drives are prohibitively expensive for home use (up to $US 1000), I've seen used DDS-2 drives lately on eBay for only $US 50-60. The DDS-2 format stores 4 gigabytes natively, which is just fine by me. As far as I know, DDS drives are always backward compatible for reading and writing older DDS format tapes, so you'll never have to ditch your old media if you upgrade your drive. I'm actually thinking about chunking my Ditto Max as a paperweight and getting a used DDS drive. Not that my Ditto Max hasn't been working exceptionally under Linux (ftape-4.02)--it's just that the media is too expensive. --Kevin ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: Eric Lee Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs To: Kevin Ernst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: wanted: Docu for CONNER CTMA 4000 IDE Tape Drive Date sent: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 13:20:36 -0400 Kevin Ernst wrote: > On 12 Jul 2000, at 15:27, Christian Zimmer wrote: > > > Hi folks, > > > > i just bought a used Conner CTMA 4000 IDE Tape Drive, but i can�t > > get it to work. My System (Kernel 2.2.14) detects the drive > > properly at boot time, but when i access the drive i always get > > the same message: I/O error. > > > > Currently, i am using DC 2120 Tapes, maybe these are the wrong > > ones. Correct. This is a QIC-Wide drive. It will read DC2120 tapes, but it will not write them (write head is the wrong width). > By the way, this information on Seagate's Web site recommends the > use of QIC-3080XLF cartridges with your drive: > http://www.seagate.com:80/support/kb/tape/sttide4.html Ugh. These guys are rare and expensive. You might want to consider chunking this beasty as a paperweight. -- Eric Lee Green There is No Conspiracy [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.badtux.org ------- End of forwarded message -------
