🚀 go-pugleaf

	Some time ago I made a posting asking about possible solutions for a
	Archive Tape drive in which the tape control commands worked, but
	the data transfer didn't. 

	As promised, here goes a solution that works (well, it worked for
	me :-). The following is a little C program I compiled and put on 
	my rc.local, that set's the transfer settings for use of fixed 512
	bytes blocks.  This code is taken from NeXTanswers. (BTW, if you still 
	don't have it, go and get NeXTanswers. It's a great place to search 
	for NeXTinformation needed for both users and sysadmins).

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/*
* The following code configures the SCSI tape driver for /dev/rst0
* to support fixed-sized data transfers of 512 bytes each.
*/

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/file.h>
#include <nextdev/scsireg.h>


main()
{
		int	fd, error;
		int	blocksize = 512; /* or whatever block size your tape likes*/

		fd = open("/dev/rst0", O_RDWR, 777);
		if (ioctl(fd, MTIOCFIXBLK, &blocksize))
		{
			perror("ioctl failedn");
			return 1; 
		}
		close (fd);
		return 0;
}

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Objnote: If you compile this code with NeXTStep 3.0 with will warn you
about using old (version 2.0) headers. Forget the warnings. I didn't,
and the code I compiled with the 3.0 headers didn't work. You have been
warned.

Objthanks: I would like to thank jimc@tau-ceti.isc-br.com (Jim Cathey),
harit@kripalu.com (Harit) and lliou@sdcc3.UCSD.EDU (Lily Liou) for their
kind help and answers to my request. Thanks, boys and girls.

-- 
 Paulo Melo      | "once again the sound of crying
 pmelo@inescc.pt |  is #1 across the earth..."     Prefab Sprout