Hi,
Sorry for the late summary but I wanted to make sure everything
was working first. Thank you all for your quick replies and suggestions.
Most of you had a hunch it would work and advised to keep the drive.
Good news, it was a piece of cake. I first put the Compaq DLT drive on a
system running V4.0G and it worked without a glitch. Here are my
observations:
device light indicators
----- ----------------
rmt0h 40 compress (80GB)
rmt0l 35 compress (70GB)
rmt0a 35 no compression
rmt0m 40 no compression
I then moved the drive to my DEC 3000/300 system running DU4.0D
and so far it appears to be working the same as above. I'm pretty
surprise that I didn't have problems.
An extra bonus for me was that I got a higher density drive than I
ordered and Compaq even charged me less than what they originally quoted
me. How's that for customer satisfaction. Needless to say, I'm keeping
this drive.
I got one query from David Barker and he was having problems with
a 'Quantum' DLT8000. With the information from the archives and man
pages, he was also able to get his drive working plus he modified his
ddr.dbase to get 20GB support. You can find his problem and solution at
the of this email. Good information regarding his changes to ddr.dbase.
(You will find my original posting and all responses below).
Thanks again for all your help. This is a great list.
Diane
------------------------------------+--------------------------------
Diane Ibaraki | IT Specialist
Department of Physics & Astronomy | <diane_at_phys.hawaii.edu>
University of Hawaii | <ibaraki_at_hawaii.edu>
2505 Correa Road (Watanabe Hall) | Phone: (808) 956-7442
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822-2219 | Fax: (808) 956-2930
------------------------------------+--------------------------------
------------------- original posting -----------------------------------
Hi,
I ordered a 35/70 Compaq DLT drive from Compaq back in August
and today I received a 40/80 Compaq DLT drive. Literature off the web
states that the 40/80GB DLT is supported under 4.0F and 5.0A. I'm
currently running 4.0 878(V4.0d). I'm planning to go to V4.0G since I
have a number of 3000 model systems.
My question is:
Can I use this 40/80 Compaq DLT drive on V4.0D or V4.0G with a
ddr.dbase file from a V5.0A system, or is it more involved than
that.
I could return it and get what I ordered, a 35/70 DLT drive. After
waiting almost 3 months for this drive, I was hoping I could just plug it
in, adjust some of the parameters in the ddr.dbase file and use it.
Thanks,
Diane
--------------------- responses --------------------------
From: Phil Farrell <farrell_at_pangea.Stanford.EDU>
Hi Diane,
For what it's worth, when my Quantum 15/30 DLT drive came years ago,
I just plugged in into the SCSI buss, ran MAKEDEV to make the rmt0
devices, and have been happily using it for years. I never made
any changes to the ddr.base file or anywhere else in the kernel.
This drive has been through several OS upgrades (3.0->3.2->4.0d)
and I have never modified any system kernel files for it.
Of course, I don't have access to any fancy features, like turning
hardware compression on or off from software, but it works just
dandy as a "dumb tape" (which defaults to using hardware compression,
by the way). You could try this.
-Phil Farrell
------
From: alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com
There's a fair chance you won't even need a ddr.dbase entry
if you only want the default highest density with compression.
The V5 ddr.dbase entry may have features that are particular
to the driver changes in V5, so a V4.0G entry would be a
better choice.
As it happens, I looked at entries from both, and most of
the differences are in the densities supported. The
8000 offers more choices that V5 can take advantage of.
------
From: "Dr. Tom Blinn, 603-884-0646" <tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com>
Worst case you need to add the parameters from a later release's DDR
database file. Best case, it just plugs in and works. I'd try it,
and if it just works to your satisfaction, be happy, otherwise, get
the DDR entries from V4.0G or V5.0x and add them. If you intend to
go to V4.0G later, getting them from the V4.0G kit may be best. If
you have the model info, I can probably find the entries on my DS20E
running V4.0G and e-mail them to you. Or I could just send you a
copy of the whole text database file.
Tom
-------
From: "Lavelle, Bryan" <Bryan.Lavelle_at_compaq.com>
I'm afraid that you have a dilemna. The DLT8000 certainly isn't supported
under 4.0d. If I were you, I wouldn't go to 4.0g either, unless your first
step into the 5.X world will be 5.1 or later. There is no upgrade path from
4.0g to 5.0 or 5.0a, but there is to 5.1. If you need this tape drive to
work properly and you have no application reason for staying at 4.0d, I'd
upgrade to 4.0f. Then, if you need additional support when 4.0f falls off
the supported list, you can purchase prior version support. You won't have
that option with 4.0g, it is a hardware release only, to support our newer
Wildfire systems, and those releases don't get PVS when they reach end of
life for support.
My 2 cents.
---------
From: Michael Huntingdon <hunting_at_ix.netcom.com>
Hi Diane
.
.
.
Since your purchase order was for the 35/70 and you received the newer
drive, I expect the burden should be on Compaq to ensure it will function
properly for you. Having said that, we know the newer drive will function
correctly with Tru64 4.0-f and 5.0-a. Since this is a newer product it was
not qualified for 4.0-d. This doesn't mean it won't work, as I expect it
would, only that it was never run through the qualification process.
Your mention of Tru64 4.0-g leads me to believe you have already tested or
are in the process of testing your applications on a development platform.
I would suggest you keep the newer tape drive and complete your testing,
including the drive. Let me know if you do not currently have a
differential controller on your development system and I'll see if I can
help there.
This should work for you, and since you received a newer/better product
for the same price as the older drive, my advice is to keep it.
.
.
.
Best Regards
Michael
------ details of David's problems with Quantum version of drive -----
From: "Barker, David" <barker.d_at_ems-t.com>
Hello Diane,
Just read your 11/09 posting on fa.alpha-osf-manager. I was wondering if
you got your DLT8000 working with osf 4.0D? If so could you send me the
ddr.dbase entries related to the DLT8000?
I've got a Quantum DLT8000 tape drive on DU 4.0e. I'm getting errors on the
console indicating problems with DDR:
ctape_ioctl: unmapped scsi density code (0x41) - DDR entry needed
Thanks!
David Barker
Sr Unix Administrator
EMS Technologies
barker.d_at_ems-t.com
770-447-4224 x3668
------------ details of David's summary - re: Quantum drive ----------
From: "Barker, David" <barker.d_at_ems-t.com>
Diane,
Thanks for responding so fast. Changing the vendor name from "COMPAQ" to
"QUANTUM" worked.
Before updating DDR I could only use the DLT8000 in 40.0 GB compressed mode
(80 GB). All the rmt1 device suffixes produced the same results. After
modifying and compiling /etc/ddr.dbase as follows I got the same
density/compression results you did:
Name = "QUANTUM" "DLT8000"
# Name = "COMPAQ" "DLT8000"
Compiling a new version of ddr.db also got rid of the "unmapped scsi density
code" error. Apparently my /etc/ddr.db binary didn't have the higher
densities listed in my ddr.dbase text file.
In addition to writing tapes at 40.0 GB density, I needed to write at 20.0
GB density for backward compatibility with DEC TZ88 drives. I was able to
do this by changing the DensityCode for the "l" suffix from 0x1b (35.0 GB)
to 0x1a (20.0 GB).
DENSITY:
#
DensityNumber = 0
DensityCode = 0x1a # 20.0 GB
# DensityCode = 0x1b # 35.0 GB
CompressionCode = 0x1
Buffered = 0x1
Thanks again for your suggestions.
Best Regards,
David Barker
Received on Thu Nov 30 2000 - 19:36:45 NZDT