Very Computer

AFAIK, IDE devices are internal-only. I've never seen a computer
with an external IDE connector.

Quote:>We don't want to have to buy each machine a SCSI card.

Why not ? Low-end SCSI controllers are pretty cheap nowadays -
you can get decent ones in the 30-50 $ range (e.g. the NCR810
based controllers).

And it would fit in very well with your wish for an easy-to-move
external device.

Quote:>We are interested in buying tape drives, because they seem
>inexpensive and are reasonably convenient.

Get a decent DAT tape drive. The QIC based drives are noisy,
slow and somewhat unreliable. DAT based backup devices are a bit
more expensive, but reliable - and IMHO that's what you want from
a backup device.

If DAT/SCSI is too expensive for you, I'm afraid you're stuck with
parallel-port devices. In that case you should look closely at
what devices are supported at all in Linux - the latest ftape
driver has some new parallel-port tape support, but I cannot
remember the URL. See comp.os.linux.announce, it was posted a few
days ago. But parallel-port devices are usually rather slow.

--
Henrik Storner  |  "testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good,
                |   if it boots up it is perfect."
                |                                    Linus Torvalds

There are two distinct parallel port solutions.  As you observe,
the latest version of ftape now supports the parallel port versions of
the "Ditto" family of tape drives.

Both 2.0.35 and recent 2.1 kernels, however, support the new breed of
parallel port ATAPI tape drives, like the HP 8GB device.  

Check out:

        http://www-math.math.rwth-aachen.de/~LBFM/claus/ftape
and
        http://www.torque.net/parport/paride.html

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<warn>I've not tried this!</warn>. Try going to DirtCheapDrives
(http://www.dirtcheapdrives.com). They have an "adapter" that will allow you
to plug/unplug IDE devices. I don't think this is a "hot swap", I am pretty
sure you need to power off, remove or add device, then power up. Look under
"Brackets" for the "Smart Shuttle Removable Brackets" area. The site says
that it allows you swap IDE disks and/or tapes. Of course, you'd need to get
one bracket per machine. The list is $59.00 - one per machine. Then you'd
need the adapter for the IDE tape drive - $65.00 per tape drive (I'd guess
only one).

I don't work for Dirt Cheap Drives. But I've been looking at vendors for a
new external SCSI and they are on my list. I haven't purchased anything from
them either, so I don't know much about them. I do remember seeing their ads
in Computer Shopper for a *long* time - for whatever that's worth to you.

John McKown