Subject: Linux-Development Digest #219
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 94 10:13:10 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #219, Volume #2         Sat, 24 Sep 94 10:13:10 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Pascal for Linux?? (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Linux on CD (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Linux on CD (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Linux on multiple processors? (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: XFig Eats All My Memory. (Hal N. Brooks)
  Re: 1.1.51 seg fault on shutdown in _floppy_release ([email-masked])
  Re: Multiprocessing Pentium Systems (Bill Kress)
  Re: ELF-based Linux distribution? [Was: Shared Libs: working toward a permanent solution?] (NightHawk)
  v1.1.51 can't boot (Michael Zill)
  Re: AX25 & KISS Amateur Radio Protocols in Linux?? (Grant Edwards)
  ncr53c810, Linux, SCSI drive appears multiple times (Adrian Miranda)
  Re: elm2.4 (Geir Tjoerhom)
  Re: source for rcs 5.6 (Eelco H. Essenberg)
  more elf benchmarks (John Richardson)
  Simple Device Driver example needed... (with mmap()) (Philip Mucci)
  Re: Linux Floptical Disk Driver? (Jim Dennis)
  Re: Installing from a QIC-80 tape? (Jim Dennis)
  Re: How to: load and run (Patrick Schaaf)
  TAR or Streamer problem! ([email-masked])

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Pascal for Linux??
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 06:41:32 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
williams <[email-masked]> wrote:
>   I was wondering if anyone knows of a Pascal compiler that is available
>for Linux.. Please give me a pointer. Thanks!
>               --Zach

Well, my Yygdrasil disk came with a pascal to c compiler (compiles pascal 
code to c code) called p2c.  I'm not sure where its from though...

Jeff Kesselman

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Linux on CD
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 06:47:13 GMT

In article <35m8oj$3i6@snlsu1>,
Andries Kruithof <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article [email-masked],  [email-masked] (Rob Janssen) writes:
>=>In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>=>
>=>>I was having a chat with someone over the net and we came to this..
>=>>What if Linux came fully implemented (X & all the disk sets) on a CD and
>=>>all you would have to do is boot off the CD rom and have the
>=>>settings/option files (ie ~/.seyon inittab & the rc scrips) in your HD.
>=>
>=>>I mean, this would save a lot of diskspace ;)
>=>
>=>There are several CD-ROMs available that allow you to do this...
>=>
>
>I can confirm this. I tried it with the TransAmeritech CD, release April 1994.
>The main problem is that it becomes real slow, compared to running it from HD.
>This was on a NEC 3xi with an Adaptec 1542 SCSI adapter.
>I think the big problem is when 2 processes try to access two different files
>(=> physical locations) simultaneously on the CD-ROM. The head has to move a 
>lot, so the seek-time slows down the data-xfer. (Am I right here?)

Youa re most probobly dead on here.  The big problem in CD-ROm based 
programming (we do it for a living at Crystal Dynamics) is the seek time 
of a CD-ROM drive.  If you seek more than abt. 20meg away from, your 
current position, it gets VERY slow.  This is because CD-ROM is a CLV 
(continuos linear velocity) medium.  In order to pack maximum data on the 
disc, it actually changes rotational speeds durign these longer seeks.  
This emans that you have to wait for it to spin-up or spin-down to the 
right speed.

>How do other people feel about running from CD-ROM? I do like the idea of 
>saving HD-space, but it becomes too slow for me to be usable.
>

As a general storage medium, CD-ROM as it currently exists is really only 
appropriate as a long-term storage and/or distribution medium 9my 
opinion, since you asked).  When you are writing a CD_ROM based game or 
'multi-media' (god, i hate that term) product, you can design an entire 
strategy around the limits of the medium, but those are special cases.
(My opinion, since you asked ;)  )

Jeff Kesselman

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Linux on CD
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 06:50:24 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Beeblebrox <[email-masked]> wrote:
>[email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman) writes:
>
>>You can do this with a number of commerical releases of Linux, including 
>>the Yygdrasil release, but in practice running UNIX off of a 300kb/sec 
>>device is painful and running X off of such a device is glacial.
>
>>Its alright as a way to look at UNIX, maybe, for a brief period, but 
>>TOTALLY unstatisfactory for doing real work.
>
>Much as I hate to, I feel I have to disagree with you there.  It depends how
>much RAM you have - if you have enough to provide a reasonable size cache and
>prevent demand paged binaries from becoming non-resident then it is a
>different ball game. It is probably best to have some of the distribution on
>the faster hard drive, agreed, but you were being a bit slating about the
>concept.  It is workable.
>---

Ok. I have to give you this one.  I keep forgetting that obscene amounts 
of ram are becoming more and mroe common.  IF you have enough ram to use 
your ram as virtual disk, rather then using your disk as virtual ram, you 
could probobly run UNIX off of tape! ;)

('course I don't think the original designers of UNIX ever imagiend such 
a thing, but one of the nicest things about UNIX is its adapatability..)

Jeff Kesselman

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Linux on multiple processors?
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 06:53:08 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, michael alan dorman
<[email-masked]> wrote: >I was wondering if this has been
considered as a possible development >goal, now that the Intel
multiprocessing hardware spec has been >standardized? > >I know that MP
(and specifically SMP) is sort of "trendy" these days >(vis. NT and OS/2
SMP), but the particular application for which I am >considering using
Linux as a platform (dialin Internet host, web server, >fairly high
volume) seems to me to be one for which SMP might give >good results--or
at least make it easier to stave off the purchase of >a second machine. >
>So is this being considered, or at least batted around as a possibility?
> >Or has it already been hashed out and discarded?  I refuse to think
that >it hasn't occured to anyone but me. > >Mike. > If this interests
you, you may want to look for papers published about the Crystal and Topaz
projects at UW-MAdison in the mid to late 80's.  The goal of those
projects was to design a workable extension to UNIX for reasonably
transparent multi-processing.  The work was done on a matrix of VAX
processors (each machine could see its 4 matrix neighbors.)

Jeff Kesselman

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Hal N. Brooks)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: XFig Eats All My Memory.
Date: 23 Sep 1994 15:39:44 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Hal N. Brooks)

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (pj04781) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]>,
>Russell E. Dube <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>Lucas James Sheneman ([email-masked]) wrote:
>>: I am running Linux 1.1.49, XF86_VGA (from XFree86-2.1.1).  When I run 
>>: xfig, it rapidly eats up all of my available memory and never actually 
>>: pops up.  I have 20MB RAM and 25MB swap.
>>
>>FWIW, I have the same problem with 1.0.9 and Slackware 2.0.  Eats my 
>>available memory (16M machine), never pops up.  Please post since
>>undoubtedly others have a need to know.  Thanks in advance.
>>Russ Dube -- My opinions, not those of my employer ...
>
>I've never tried running xfig on my linux machine at home, but I do know
>that it takes 30 seconds to a minute to start on a Sun Sparc with 32 megs
>and starts in less than 5 seconds on a Sparc with 64 megs of ram. It is
>
>a memory pig and swaps like crazy starting up on the 32 meg machine. 
>Granted, the OS takes up a lot more room on the Sun's, but even the CAD
>and simulation packages here take up less memory to start.
>
>You might try closing all other windows first and/or increasing swap to
>get it to run. It is a nice package.
>
>Personal opinions,
>frank

You guys obviously have a problem with your Fig and/or Fig-color
apps-defaults file(s).

Here's how long it takes me to start and quit xfig 2.1.8 (without
loading a .fig file) on a 386-33 with 8 MB or memory:

{/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults} date; xfig; date
Fri Sep 23 11:22:43 EDT 1994
Fri Sep 23 11:23:07 EDT 1994
{/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults} 

As for memory usage:

USER        PID %CPU %MEM SIZE  RSS TT STAT START   TIME COMMAND
hal         909  5.7 12.4 1090  876 p1 S    11:25   0:07 xfig

Less than a week ago, someone reported in c.o.l.h that there's a
problem with the app-defaults file, though I compiled 2.1.8 from
the standard distribution some time ago and never had this bizarre
problem.

Perhaps it is an artifact of some distribution.

Follow-ups directed to c.o.l.h, as this is obviously not a Linux
kernel development related issue.  Hell, it's arguably not even
a Linux related issue.

======================================================================
 Hal N. Brooks     Voice: (706) 546-7792     Internet: [email-masked]
======================================================================

------------------------------

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: 1.1.51 seg fault on shutdown in _floppy_release
Date: 22 Sep 1994 14:10:47 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (David Miller) writes:
>If you look in your /var/adm/kernlog, you'll see a nice "OOPS" there
>also, the code is referenceing a kernel NULL pointer :-) Thank god for
>qmagic!
>
>Later,
>David S. Miller
>[email-masked]

Actually the kernel NULL pointer trap is much older then the Linux
qmagic support. It was introduced in one of the < 0.98 kernel versions.
I remember, that one of the syscalls done by login failed, so I had to
compile an older kernel on a friends machine.

Best regards
    Joerg
================================================================================
Joerg Pommnitz, ARTe Team, IBM Scientific Center Heidelberg, Germany
Mail1: [email-masked]
Mail2: [email-masked]
Tel. : Germany (06221) 59 3609

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Bill Kress)
Subject: Re: Multiprocessing Pentium Systems
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 23:22:24 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Mark Bolzern) writes:
>From: [email-masked] (Mark Bolzern)
>Subject: Re: Multiprocessing Pentium Systems
>Date: Thu, 22 Sep 1994 22:39:22 GMT

>In article <[email-masked]>,
>David Williams <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>
>>I've just seen some new dual processor pentium systems in Computer
>>Shopper.  They look swell for the money, but there isn't a single OS
>>that can take advantage of them.  Anybody have any thoughts about how
>>hard it might be to make Linux one of the first OS's to take advantage
>>of these systems?

>Not quite true... SCO MPX will work with many of them.  But it would still
>be good to have Linux available......

Windows NT runs fine on multi-pentium machines, and nt3.5 looks pretty
slick on a dual pentium machine (Built in tcp/ip now too).  Still, linux
support wouldn't hurt. 

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (NightHawk)
Subject: Re: ELF-based Linux distribution? [Was: Shared Libs: working toward a permanent solution?]
Date: 22 Sep 1994 22:37:30 -0400

Dan Connolly ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Eric Youngdale) writes:

:          I am not entirely unsympathetic to the complaints about loss of
:    performance, but to start with I just want to get vanilla ELF working and
:    stable.  Once we reach this point, then performance enhancements can be
:    considered (and I do have ideas).  How much trouble I go to depends upon
:    how bad the problem really is, and this will become evident as time
:    goes on.  Whatever enhancements I make to improve performance will have
:    the following properties:

: OK... so I gather ELF binaries and shared libraries are a viable
: long-term solution to the current shared library foo.

: In fact, it looks inevitable to me.

: So here's the next question: who will be the first to support a
: complete ELF-based Linux distribution? Are any of the major
: distributors planning to do this?

Two vendors have been asked if they are interested in making test ELF
distributions. No definite responses yet. It may take a while.

: I built the Modula-3 runtime libraries using the current shared-library
: tools (that's how I got started with this thread), and I can image
: that eliminating all that assembly re-writing could dramatically impact
: the time it takes to compile a complete Linux distribution. Should
: be quite a bit quicker.

You cannot believe how easy it is :-).

: So are there significant technical obstacles remaining, or is it
: a question of mind-share now?

More tests need to be done.

: How many major apps have been built/tested with the ELF tools?

gcc, gas/binutils and zsh 2.5.03. If somene could donate a fast
motherboard and a big SCSI drive, I could do more.

:       * Has the X386 team started messing with ELF tools?
:               (how do they build shared libs for other BSD-based
:               x86 unices like BSD386, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and the like?)

Yes.

:       * How about the apps where nobody touches the source code
:               any more, like TeX?

Don't know.

:       * I heard emacs excercised some problems with the ELF tools.
:               Anyone care to elaborate?

Someone is working on it.

:       * How about the networking tools -- are there any interactions?
:               Has anyone begun exploring?

I don't think that will be any problem.

: From what I have read, the ELF tools are nearly complete. They are
: exiting the ALPHA phase, and it's time for major wide-spread BETA
: testing. I guess that will take a few months, and then distributors
: will start to think seriously about doing an ELF-based distribution...
: probably some time before next summer.

: Does that sound reasonable?

Yes.

Here may be a shock: BINARIES LINKED AGAINST THE ELF/PIC LIBRARY MAY RUN
FASTER THAN THE ONES LINKED AGAINST THE OLD A.OUT/DLL LIBRARY. The
PIC/ELF library is being fine tuned which may speed it up significantly.
But the old a.out/DLL library is never tuned. At the worst case, I am
expecting no more than 5% slow down against the fine tuned a.out/DLL
library. Remember only libraries are compiled with PIC.

NH
: Dan

: -- 
: Daniel W. Connolly        "We believe in the interconnectedness of all things"
: Software Engineer, Hal Software Systems, OLIAS project   (512) 834-9962 x5010
: <[email-masked]>                   http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/index.html

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Michael Zill)
Subject: v1.1.51 can't boot
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 1994 21:07:12 GMT

Hi,

an other problem with the patch51: When I boot it, I use lilo and
extended vga switch, the font is switched to 80x43 char and then 
the system reboots !!!
The patch 50 works fine for me.
I use a 1542B as host adaptor. I only have SCSI disks.

Michael

-- 
*******************************************************************
* Michael Zill             * Phone : +49 6171 72175               *
* Feldbergstr.90           * Email : [email-masked]        *
* 61449 Steinbach/ Germany *                                      *
******************************************************************* 

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Grant Edwards)
Subject: Re: AX25 & KISS Amateur Radio Protocols in Linux??
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 03:11:24 GMT

Alan Cox ([email-masked]) wrote:
: [email-masked] (Vassili Leonov) writes:

: >The original identity of the HAM radio is to be at the frontier and
: >benefit the humanity - and free of charge... It's public service -
: >running a NON-COMMERCIAL network on top of that is no contradiction.

: ROTFL. The real motivation for most Governments allowing amateur radio is a 
: handy supply of radio trained people in case a war turns up.

Back when knowing Morse code was considered a useful skill by the
military, that was probably (at least partially) true.  Does anybody
besides hams use Morse these days?

--
Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  Youth of today!  Join
Rosemount Inc.                                |me in a mass rally for
                                              |traditional mental
[email-masked]                          |attitudes!

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Adrian Miranda)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: ncr53c810, Linux, SCSI drive appears multiple times
Date: 22 Sep 1994 21:38:38 GMT

I have an NCR53c810 SCSI controller card, and a PCI bus machine.  I'm
using the Slackware Linux NCR boot disk.  After much pain and misery,
I got the Linux kernel to see the NCR controller and the SCSI drive.
The problem is that it thinks I have 7 identical disks, it seems to
see the same drive on every possible SCSI id.  I can partition the
disk with fdisk, but when I go into the Slackware setup, it apparently
sees all the ghost disks, and dies.

Of course, my NCR53C810 card doesn't have a BIOS on it, and I suspect
my Motherboard BIOS doesn't support the NCR controller.  The only
thing the (Award) BIOS has that sounds promising is "On board PCI/SCSI
BIOS".  I was kind of hoping that meant the BIOS was on board, but I
suppose it is only for motherboards that have a SCSI controller
on-board?  Am I out of luck?  Perhaps the Award BIOS can be upgraded
to a newer version that does support the NCR controller?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Adrian

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Geir Tjoerhom)
Subject: Re: elm2.4
Date: 24 Sep 1994 12:24:35 GMT

Wolfgang Feldmann ([email-masked]) wrote:
> I get this nice error when I try to compile elm2.4:

> cc  -O -I../hdrs    -c opt_utils.c
> opt_utils.c: In function `gethostname':
> opt_utils.c:90: argument `size' doesn't match prototype
> /usr/include/unistd.h:564: prototype declaration
> *** Error code 1

> Stop.
> make: *** [all] Error 1

> Any ideas please?

> Wolfgang Feldmann

I had the same problem, but the remedy is simple. Bring up your editor
with the file opt_utils.c and change the declaration of the variable
size from "size_t size" to "int size" (if my memory serves me well). Et
voila!

--
Geir Tjoerhom
[email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Eelco H. Essenberg)
Subject: Re: source for rcs 5.6
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 12:43:19 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Wai Long Fong <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I am looking for source code of version control software such as the one
>that comes with Slackware 2.0, rcs 5.6. Actually, source code for any
>version control package will be alright. Thanks a lot in advance. 

RCS is GNU software. Check prep.ai.mit.edu or one of its mirrors near you.
CVS works on top of RCS and allows version control of entire source trees.

Regards,

Eelco.

-- 
==========================< Eelco Essenberg >===============================
[email-masked]                            [email-masked]
                      FTP Manager: ftp.twi.tudelft.nl
   <a href=http://www.twi.tudelft.nl/People/E.Essenberg.html>Click me!</a>

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (John Richardson)
Subject: more elf benchmarks
Date: 24 Sep 1994 13:22:33 GMT

In a completely unscientific test (running X, slackware 2.0), I used 
this program to time the differences between elf and a.out formats:

===================================================================
#include <stdlib.h>

int compare(const void *a, const void *b) { return *(int*)a - *(int*)b; }

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
        int i;

        for (i=0; i<1000000; i++) {
                int array[10] = { 5, 2, 4, 2, 1, 5, 2, 9, 94, 87 };

                qsort(array, 10, sizeof(int), compare);
        }
        exit(0);
}
===================================================================
test>gcc -O3 -V 2.6.0-940917 test.c -o test-a.out
test>gcc-elf -O3 -V 2.6.0-940917 test.c -o test-elf
test>ls -l test-a.out test-elf 
-rwxr-xr-x   1 jrichard users       15400 Sep 24 09:02 test-a.out*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 jrichard users        2970 Sep 24 09:02 test-elf*
===================================================================
test>time test-a.out; time test-a.out; time test-elf; time test-elf
60.98user 0.06system 1:01.08elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+0minor)pagefaults 0swaps
61.15user 0.04system 1:01.22elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+0minor)pagefaults 0swaps
64.27user 0.06system 1:04.35elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+0minor)pagefaults 0swaps
64.36user 0.07system 1:04.60elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+0minor)pagefaults 0swaps

About 5% difference, not bad.  Still it would be nicer if elf
was faster. :)
In limited testing, tests without many system calls were about equal.

--
John Richardson
[email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Philip Mucci)
Subject: Simple Device Driver example needed... (with mmap())
Date: 22 Sep 1994 17:49:30 -0400

        Hi fellow Linux-ers!

        We need some help over here in the Amiga Linux camp. We're gearing up
for an X11 port (fun, fun, fun!). To start with, we basically need a device 
driver that can mmap() the Amigas coprocessor registers into the user space. 
Is there a document around that gives hints how to do this? The old Linux
character device driver manual skips over the mmap part... :-(

        All we really need is:

        open()
        mmap()
        unmap()
        close()

        ...and a way to wake up the user process upon reception of a
hardware interrupt (from the blitter)

        I know someone out there must know how to do this!

        Thanks!

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jim Dennis)
Subject: Re: Linux Floptical Disk Driver?
Date: 23 Sep 1994 02:32:22 GMT

>My thought was why not a Floptical Disk Drive?
>
>Have anyone out there any informations or experiences about these 
>drives? Are they suported by Linux or have a device driver to be 
>developed? do they require a special controller?
>         Oliver.

        I don't have any direct experience with Floptical's under Linux.
        However it is a SCSI device (looks pretty much like a Bernoulli
        to the device drivers used by DOS and Windows -- i.e. no special
        drivers needed for access -- but there was a special format 
        program.

--
///////////////////////////[email-masked]//////////////////////////////
#include <std.disclaimer>
/* exclude cute.sig.comments */

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jim Dennis)
Subject: Re: Installing from a QIC-80 tape?
Date: 23 Sep 1994 02:37:26 GMT

>I am trying to upgrade my Linux from an old SLS to Slackware,  I now have
>a Colorado 250mb tape drive and would like to install from it.
>
>I was going to copy all install files to a DOS partition, then 
>use a DOS program to back it up to tape.  Can I then use this tape
>to install from?
>
>John Byrns
>[email-masked]

   Last I read Patrick Volkerding was trying to implement something like
   this for Slackware 2.0.  I would get the readme file for that 
   distribution (sunsite.unc.edu:\pub\linux\distributions\slackware? or
   somewhere off of ftp.cdrom.com?) and see if it ever got tested.

   You'd have to write the slackware disksets to the tape in a specific
   order which he specified in one of his readme's.

--
///////////////////////////[email-masked]//////////////////////////////
#include <std.disclaimer>
/* exclude cute.sig.comments */

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Patrick Schaaf)
Subject: Re: How to: load and run
Date: 24 Sep 1994 16:06:00 -0000

[email-masked] (Whitney de Vries) writes:

>How do you allocate memory/pages that can write to and
>then execute ? ( Linux specific or general Unix solution welcome )

At least on the x86, you just do it - there is no "execute" protection
in the page tables, and Linux has the code segment span the whole 3GB
address range. malloc() the memory you need, put your code there,
and jump to it.

You probably want to have a look at libdld (the GNU dynamic linker)
to save a lot of work.

Patrick

------------------------------

From: [email-masked]
Subject: TAR or Streamer problem!
Date: 24 Sep 1994 10:12:35 -0400
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 14:40:22 +0000
From: Andre Couture <[email-masked]>
Sender: Andre Couture <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: Andre Couture <[email-masked]>
Subject: TAR or Streamer problem!
To: "comp.os.linux.help" <[email-masked]>
cc: "comp.os.linux.development" <[email-masked]>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9409241451.B15599-0100000@cyborg>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

I have tried both of the proposed GNU-TAR for windows. Both seem to have 
problem with my config.

In all cases, the process terminate with a message like this on the 
Windows side:
     "The virtual circuit was reset by the remote site."

I have been looking for a while on how to backup my notebook on a 
reliable way since my tape drive in on my Linux box. Here I found that 
somebody has ported the gnu-tar to Windows. Good work.
 
What is the tape length? Here is what I get, I know that the 'unformated' 
tape is 120MB for a Jumbo250, but once formatted???

I have done a simple test which has run ok.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ftape count=120 bs=1024k

This was supposed to write 120MB of null to the tape.
Returned no errors.

now when I use tar then there seem to have some problems writing to the 
tape, ALWAYS get I/O errors.

Here is the command used with WinTar:
 > rsh explorer "tar -cvf - @\\cyborg\dosc\wapps\explorer.bkf -L 120M -V

Explorer" | dd bs=10240 of=/dev/ftape 

Here is the results:

 dd: /dev/ftape: I/O error
 0+11356 records in
 0+11355 records out
| 

Note that for every test the records count differ (+-500 @ 11356).

Now what is the problem?
My Adaptec 1742A?
My Quantum HD?
Tape buffer size? (3)
Tape backup (Jumbo250MB)
GNU-TAR for Unix? (I suppose nothing to do with the windows side!)
My 486DX50 too fast for the streamer?
XIRCOM III <-> WD80x3E ?
Linux 1.1.51?
Something else?

I don't suppose that it is a bad tape as the 120MB of zeros worked!

Please somebody give me an answer, I don't like the idea of having data 
(525MB Linux + 200MB DOS AST Notebook) not backed up for too long and it 
already been.

andre

=====
Andre Couture,
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+1-819-775-9697
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+39/6-5125-745
 _/           _/     _/            Ottawa, Ontario      Delphi:    
CoutureA
_/_/_/_/. _/_/_/_/. _/_/_/_/.

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