Very Computer

by **Sven Koen** » Mon, 29 Jun 1998 04:00:00

Does Redhat 5.0 support the HP Colorado 8GB Tape Drive?

Thanks
Sven

by **J.R** » Wed, 01 Jul 1998 04:00:00

>Does Redhat 5.0 support the HP Colorado 8GB Tape Drive?

I have used the HP Colorado 8GB drives with 'tar' for a few years now with
kernels 1.2.13 and 2.0.34. You just need to make sure that you have
support for your SCSI card and SCSI tapes compiled into the kernel.

Rob
Disclaimer: not a disinterested party - I was on the team that designed it.

by **Marcin Golembsk** » Thu, 02 Jul 1998 04:00:00

> I have used the HP Colorado 8GB drives with 'tar' for a few years
> now with kernels 1.2.13 and 2.0.34. You just need to make sure
> that you have support for your SCSI card and SCSI tapes compiled
> into the kernel.

That's interesting, because HP Colorado 8GB has been on the market
for just a few (3?) months. Besides, the internal version is IDE
and external is parallel.

--
Marcin ___
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by **Marcin Golembsk** » Thu, 02 Jul 1998 04:00:00

> I have used the HP Colorado 8GB drives with 'tar' for a few years
> now with kernels 1.2.13 and 2.0.34. You just need to make sure
> that you have support for your SCSI card and SCSI tapes compiled
> into the kernel.

That's interesting, because HP Colorado 8GB has been on the market
for just a few (3?) months. Besides, the internal version is IDE
and external is parallel.

--
Marcin ___
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by **Rob Si** » Thu, 02 Jul 1998 04:00:00

>> I have used the HP Colorado 8GB drives with 'tar' for a few years
>> now with kernels 1.2.13 and 2.0.34. You just need to make sure
>> that you have support for your SCSI card and SCSI tapes compiled
>> into the kernel.
>That's interesting, because HP Colorado 8GB has been on the market
>for just a few (3?) months. Besides, the internal version is IDE
>and external is parallel.

Just because ATAPI and parallel versions have been recently released, doesn't
mean that SCSI versions were not released quite some time earlier. Negative
proofs don't mean anything.

It's good to be skeptical of who people are on the net, but research is
warranted before publically implying someone is a liar.

My post mentioned that I was one of the developers - that should have
prompted at least some verification that this drive did not exist before
posting such implications. The specifications for this non-existent SCSI
drive can be found:

http://www.hp.com/tape/datasheets/travan4.html

I have been using this SCSI drive since before it was released, and I
believe it was released about Spring '96. It was known as the T4000 for
a while, and then changed to T4. An 'i' or 'e' followed the model for
internal or external, respectively.

I have had to do restores from this drive, and the backup has always been
readable. I did wear out a pre-production model, and got plenty of
warnings during the backup that there were problems - no silent failures.

Rob

by **Adrian Wis** » Fri, 03 Jul 1998 04:00:00

Sven

I'm sure that the SCSI versions of HP's tape drives do work.

However, the IDE/ATAPI internal version does not.

I found out the hard (expensive) way. The driver
ide-tape.c has an explicit test on the DRQ type and doesn't like
what it sees.

I'm working on a solution to the problem as I am quite motivated
to get my tape drive working. There has been some work on UDMA
for disk drives which seems to be related to the problem with the
tape drive. I've only had the tape drive for 3 days so I haven't
really had a chance to look at the problem seriously.

regards

Adrian

--
/*********************************************************************
* Adrian Wise
* Senior Consultant Systems Engineer, Corporate Consumer Design
*
* LSI Logic Europe Limited Tel: +44-1344-426544 (switch)
* Greenwood House, London Road +44-1344-413187 (direct)
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by **Grant Guenth** » Fri, 03 Jul 1998 04:00:00

>However, the IDE/ATAPI internal version does not.

>I found out the hard (expensive) way. The driver
>ide-tape.c has an explicit test on the DRQ type and doesn't like
>what it sees.

A solution for this problem has been available for months.

Gadi Oxman, the author of the driver, would have provided it if you
asked him, alternatively you can get it from

ftp://ftp.torque.net/pub/ide-tape-patch

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by **ma..** » Fri, 03 Jul 1998 04:00:00

The adverti*ts that I've seen make this tape drive look just line
the 5GB unit, only with more capacity. If this is the case, you can
use the 5GB driver with this tape unit. In the worse case, this driver
would be a good place to start.

Unfortunately, I don't remember who did the work, but check
dejanews...

Marty Sasaki

by **Marcin Golembsk** » Sat, 04 Jul 1998 04:00:00

> >> > Does Redhat 5.0 support the HP Colorado 8GB Tape Drive?
> >> I have used the HP Colorado 8GB drives with 'tar' for a few years
> >> now with kernels 1.2.13 and 2.0.34. You just need to make sure
> >> that you have support for your SCSI card and SCSI tapes compiled
> >> into the kernel.

> >That's interesting, because HP Colorado 8GB has been on the market
> >for just a few (3?) months. Besides, the internal version is IDE
> >and external is parallel.

> Just because ATAPI and parallel versions have been recently released,
> doesn't mean that SCSI versions were not released quite some time
> earlier.

Rob, if you've read the info on HP WWW carefully you should have
noticed that these "versions" are NAMED "HP Colorado 8GB."

Sven had asked about a specific product, an ATAPI or parallel
drive, not just any HP Colorado tape drive of 8GB capacity...
So your answer to Sven's question was simply inadequate.

--
Marcin ___
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