🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, as several people said, the Exabyte 8mm cartridge unit
works out of the box on the DECStation 3100 with Ultrix 3.1,
provided you have the dip switches set correctly (and possibly,
a late-model Exabyte with uptodate ROMs.)  For the record, my
dip switch settings as recommended by Exabyte tech support are:
(SW3 ON--even byte disconnect, SW4 ON--no busy enable,
SW5 ON--variable block mode on power up.)  Everything else is set to off.

I've been using it now for most of the evening, and I've
seen a few glitches which I'd like to compare with other
people's experience:

It's not clear to me how you get the unit to come "on line"
once you insert a tape.  Only with a power cycle after inserting
a new cartridge does the tape actually get threaded, and the
green LED indicate "on line".  Otherwise, if you insert a 8mm
cartridge (say, after removing an earlier one) the unit just
sits there offline.  I must be missing something.

"tar tbf 2 /dev/rmt1h ..." works fine.  "tar" with a blocksize
of 20 (10240 bytes) causes Ultrix 3.1 to hang completely.
I'm happy with the first, given that it works.  I am not
familiar with the optimum blocksize for an 8mm drive.
Is there one?  Do I end up losing a lot of tape with IRG's
if I'm not careful?



-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer@arktouros.mit.edu, dyer@hstbme.mit.edu