by I will shortly put Linux on an HP Vectra RS/20 (20MHz 386) with two
ESDI disks (155MB and 103MB). The system has no SCSI controller.
Trips to my local computer stores indicate that there are many QIC
drives for DOS machines, these promise to be able to store up to 250MB
using "software compression," and they claim to be capable of reading
(and in fewer cases writing) other QIC formats.
Most of these are made by Colorado Memory Systems, and they are
invitingly priced from about $200-$300. They have only DOS or NetWare
drivers packaged with them, though, and in his exhaustive summary of
Intel hardware for UNIX (posted here recently), Eric S. Raymond
recommends against them because they are too slow. I can believe
that, since they run off a floppy controller, but since most of my
unattended backups will be incremental and late at night, speed may
not be a serious factor for me.
Does anyone have any experience with such tape drives on Linux
systems? If so, what are your recommendations?
Jim McCauley, Learning Products Engineer ** I do not speak for **
(that means that I write documentation) ** Hewlett-Packard in any **