Re: VXA tape drive
On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 12:49:29PM -0600, David W. Chapman Jr. wrote: I checked in current with little luck. Does -current support VXA-1 tape drives by Ecrix. The site claims that freebsd does, but the only response by someone that has one says that it won't successfully backup. I've been using an external VXA-1 drive since October 1999 (FreeBSD 3.3 or so). It is currently attached to a FreeBSD 4.1 machine. I really love it. -- Jacques Vidrine / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
VXA tape drive
I checked in current with little luck. Does -current support VXA-1 tape drives by Ecrix. The site claims that freebsd does, but the only response by someone that has one says that it won't successfully backup. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Re: VXA tape drive
Well, details would be nice. I checked in current with little luck. Does -current support VXA-1 tape drives by Ecrix. The site claims that freebsd does, but the only response by someone that has one says that it won't successfully backup. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
RE: VXA tape drive
I've been using one under 4.2-STABLE, for some time, without problems. On 15-Jan-01 David W. Chapman Jr. wrote: I checked in current with little luck. Does -current support VXA-1 tape drives by Ecrix. The site claims that freebsd does, but the only response by someone that has one says that it won't successfully backup. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Re: VXA tape drive
On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 12:49:29PM -0600, David W. Chapman Jr. thus spoke: I checked in current with little luck. Does -current support VXA-1 tape drives by Ecrix. The site claims that freebsd does, but the only response by someone that has one says that it won't successfully backup. It really should work. I talked with the Ecrix people awhile back and the drive is essentially just a DAT drive. What makes it different is internally it is writing short packet across the width of the tape, and using multiple heads. The reason is that if you don't send data to a tape fast enough it will back up, stop and restart. Ecrix calls this 'back-hitching' but I remember it from the old days called 'shoe shining'. So they slow down the tape as it travels across the heads. This changed the anlge of the helical stripes. This would make the tape unreadable in a device which expects the data to be readable across the width of the tape. By using 'packets' they put several blocks of data across the width, and if a head can read the first packet, but the angle of the helix is such that the next one is not readable, the next head will pick this up. Quite an interesting approach to enable the tape to never stop and maximize the data throughput. What kind of errors are you having? Bill -- Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Re: VXA tape drive
On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 01:31:47PM -0600, David W. Chapman Jr. thus spoke: thanks for the background, quite interesting. You're welcome. I'm currently writing a series of articles for the tape newbie that a friend coaxed me into. I've finished electrons, magnets, head design and QIC tape. Rotary heads are next. Don't know where I'll go from there. www.aplawrence.com. Go to Unix articles and you'll see them listed on the top right side of the page as I recall. If you are into audio tape - I wrote an article a jillion years ago that has widely propagated. goto www.bilver.com [note that it is not the same as this address] and go down to aligning your professional tape recoder. I was an audio recording engineer before computers came to dominate my life. Bill -- Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
