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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt
From: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch (Norbert Bladt)
Subject: Re: Problems with Archive Viper 525MB tape drive
Message-ID: <CC7Hy1.9x1@autelca.ascom.ch>
Organization: Ascom Autelca AG, Guemligen, Switzerland
References: <745762232snz@raffles.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1993 09:49:12 GMT
Lines: 50

david@raffles.demon.co.uk (David Dooley) writes:

>Hello,

>Help. I have a i486DX/33Mz machine with an Adeptec 1542B SCSI interface in
>factory default configuration and 2 SCSI disks first being a Seagate ST1239N
[ text deleted ]

>Not mentioned above the system is currrently running 386BSD split accros both
>disks with DOS partitions on both disk also. 

>I will try any thing to get this fixed as it would make my life so much easier 
>with beaing able to transfer files to and from work and from another machine
>that uses a 150MB Archive Viper tape drive and 386BSD. By the way we both have
>the same revision level of 386BSD which leads me to belive that the problem
>is physical.
Just use plain old MS-DOS to transfer the files and mount the MS-DOS filesystem
under 386BSD (is there such a thing like a reliable PC filesystem
implementation, yet ?)
No, just kidding :-)
You will see, that the drive works with MS-DOS, aspi4dos.sys and ASPITAR.EXE
very well. It will read and write all the tapes you will throw at it, including
60 MB and 150 MB tapes ! (Yes, read AND write).
Believe me, I have such a drive at home, connected to an Adaptec 1742A (EISA
controller) and it works with MS-DOS and (finally !) also with 386BSD (still
at patchkit 0.1 or whatever was the first release). However, I am using
"Julian's" SCSI driver kit with the latest fixes (thanks a lot, Julian !).
I am sorry, I don't know where to get those, they were posted on the net
a few month ago, I guess.
After applying those patches, finally the drive works and not just with the
525MB tapes as before.
Because I have experienced exactly the same behaviour with exactly the same
ROM revision and the same type of drive, this should be the solution of your
problem.
If you can't find the fixes anywhere I can take a look at home (I'm at work
now) and try to figure out what the latest patch was.

Hope this helps,

Norbert.

P.S. I didn't fiddle with the drive hardware at all except setting the SCSI-Id
of the drive to 4. This is a good idea if you are planning to use the drive
from MS-DOS for backups or file-transfers because ASPITAR likes this setting
very much. Otherwise you have to give extra cmd-line options or set an
environment variable in MS-DOS.
-- 
Norbert Bladt, Ascom Autelca AG, Worbstr. 201, CH-3073 Guemligen, Switzerland
Phone: +41 31 999 65 52			FAX: +41 31 999 65 44
Mail: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch   UUCP: ..!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt