Subject: Need an 8 mm tape recommendation

From: "Pedro I. Sanchez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 11:04:16 -0400

Hello,

I need to buy and install an 8mm tape system for our debian systems.
If you happen to have one up and running, could you drop me a note
telling me things like:

	- Tape system brand name,
	- Connection type (serial/parallel port, internal, etc.),
	- Software used to access the tape (I only see something called
	  "taper" in the debian distribution),
	- Any other info that could guide me.

Thank you,

Pedro Ivan
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From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 20:32:56 -0400

Hi Pedro --

> 	- Tape system brand name,

I have an Exabyte 8505.

> 	- Connection type (serial/parallel port, internal, etc.),
SCSI.

> 	  "taper" in the debian distribution),
tob is also in the distribution; it is superior to taper in these ways:
  whereas taper uses direct ioctl calls, tob is a shell script that
  uses well-known and well-tested device I/O programs such as cpio, afio,
  and/or (depending on the users' choice) tar.
I belive that tob is also much easier to set up; the documentation is
  far superior.

>        - Any other info that could guide me.
I think an Exabyte is way too expensive, slow, and inconvenient for what 
it does nowadays.  Also at the present, I am currently having trouble 
obtaining its rated capacity (5 GBytes); I can't seem to get more
than 1.5 GBytes onto it.

Exabytes are also not competitive on a cost/MB basis with Jaz drives, which 
are now down to $400 for the drive plus $95 for each 1 GB platter (at least 
that's what they cost a couple of weeks ago), and are MUCH faster.  

If I needed a lot of storage space, I'd look into the DEC cartridges 
(DLT drives?) that hold about 40 GBytes.  My understanding is that 
Seagate will be coming out with a very large capacity device like these 
for well under $500 this Fall.

HTH,
Susan Kleinmann