by A small warning to anyone considering getting a scsi tape drive: the
HP "Colorado Memory Systems" T4000s looks pretty good; 4Gb uncompressed
("8Gb compressed"), and not *too* expensive, however it apparently does not
work with the popular-with-Linux Mylex Buslogic 958 ultrawide scsi controller.
At least, the two won't work together under Windows, according to my
vendor, who talked to both companies, each of which (naturally) blamed
the other.
OTOH when the vendor swapped the Buslogic out and tried an Adaptec 9040
(I'm not sure if I got that model # right), the Adaptec worked just
fine with that tape drive. The implication is that the bug *is* on
Buslogic's side, although that's not completely proven.
I suppose it's possible that these two items would work together under Linux,
even when they don't under Windoze with the manufacturer's drivers, but
that seems fairly unlikely.
The Adaptec itself is risky under Linux these days, since Adaptec blacklisted
Linux developers, so respecting the unofficial Adaptec boycott is more than
reasonable. As someone said recently, it worked with Diamond (like others,
I helped on that by buying ATI and telling Diamond why), so maybe it's time
to really get rolling with Adaptec the same way.
Therefore, caveat emptor. (And I'm now looking for a scsi tape drive that
*will* work with the Buslogic...maybe I'll fall back on IDE. Alas.)
Doug
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