At 07:20 AM 1/20/2002 -0800, Ron Hudson wrote: Back in 1998 I posted about a circa 1992 "ASPITAPE.SYS" driver I got from Compuserve to drive SCSI DAT and Exabyte under MS-DOS. I seem to remember using it under Windows 3.11. I even had a 'tar' and 'mt' that worked with it. I can probably find them again if you like. http://www.fship.com/ftp/pdtools has the "pctar.exe" that worked with it, and http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/DOS/49/2.html has the ASPITAPE.SYS driver. It was made by Greg Shenaut. He's still active at <greg(a)bogslab.ucdavis.edu> although I doubt the software has been updated since 1992. Today's Google search on ASPITAPE showed that you can use it to emulate TMSCP tapes under the Osprey emulator, too. - John

Can't find the TTi (tape drive) system site? Did they go away? Anyone have a pointer to an 8510 manual or an electronic copy? thanks rod

BTW, Transitional Technology seems to be nonexistant :( At 09:54 PM 1/20/02 -0800, you wrote:

I'd caution you to be VERY careful about relying on Win9x for backup, irrespective of the 3rd-party application you use. There are only a few I haven't tried, and and, so far, I've found exactly NONE that work reliably, i.e. that perform backup, verify, and restore, as they should under a wide range of situations. A few work some of the time, and those are the WORST thing to try to deal with, as they build up unwarranted confidence. Keep in mind that you spend most of the time simply making backups, and on the rare occasion when you really do need it, it's a real disappointment to find that the application can't read its own writing if the backup date and restore date don't have the same checksum, or crc or the phase of the moon is different. It's true that the Windows Backup is pretty poor, but the reason these applications don't work, in general, has less to do with the fact they're backup applications and more to do with the way in which the OS interacts with its disk storage media, file system, and I/O, and consequently seems to have ill effect on both the Microsoft-provided (acquired from Seagate) Backup and those from third-party vendors. I've ovbserved the same ill effects on M$ backup that I've seen on products ranging in cost from $50 to $750, and have yet to find one that works in all circumstances. Unfortunately, the crappy product from M$ seems to work about as (un)reliably as any. What all of this suggests to me is that it has little to do with the SCSI interface or with the way in which it handles tape drives, since I've had similar problems on SCSI tape, SCSI disk, IDE tape, and IDE removables, as well as floppy-tape. Even storage to network devices seems to be impacted by the general ieffectiveness of backup strategies under Wind9x. I'd welcome any constructive suggestions, short of wasting another few bucks on yet another half-assed backup package. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doc" <doc(a)mdrconsult.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 11:01 AM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95

I'll certainly consider that once the LINUX documentation is within a generation or two of the currently released software, rather than six or seven generations out of phase. It's too risky to use code that's not documented any better than that. It's worse than NO documents at all! I use an old DOS-based backup utility, called EnterpriZ, which was done by some third-party in collaboration with Exabyte and Novell, together with "doslfnbk" to deal with the long file names. That seems to work without a hitch, though it takes down the machine being backed up for the duration. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tothwolf" <tothwolf(a)concentric.net> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 12:18 PM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95

The windows 98 backup ploy did not work, I was finally able to copy all of the needed dlls, then when the backup software was launched, it ran for a moment then quietly quit. I am currently trying the ASPITAPE.SYS and PCTAR.EXE as suggested by John Foust. I do have a DOS diskette that I can boot with that has all the Adaptec drivers and Syquest junk. Here's the rundown of the machine: 486 66 DX cpu with 16mb memory 165 mb SCSI hard drive internal 40 mb SCSI Syquest drive internal 640x480 16 color video SCSI CDROM external Tanberg TDC3800 SCSI tape external. 5.25 & 3.5 combined floppy disks. Sweet "lunchbox Style" case. I have pictures, can I attach them to an email to the list?

Ok, aspitape did not recognize my tape drive. So at this point I am going to go with the "Back up to the Samba server and thence (??) to tape via my regular linux backups" plan. I give up... Brian Chase wrote: Brian, cd, syquest, main hard drive and tape are all on one scsi bus. and the floppy drive connects to ports on the SCSI controller. (an adaptec aha1542 i think). The tape drive is comming off and perhaps will be replaced with an auxillary hard drive.. I do have a Teac tape drive but those data cassette tapes (looks like a audio cassette tape but with a notch taken out of the "oposite of heads" side) are expensive and don't hold much. Who knows perhaps I will LINUX the machine next week... ;^) ron

Clearly you won't be running Windows ... so there are numerous very adequate backup programs, most of which would make short work of the 165 MB with an adequate tape drive. My little EXB8200 would back that up, verify it, and keep a file-by-file directory of the DOS files in about 25 minutes, I'd guess. The EXB-8500C would do it in about 10 minutes on media costing about $3, with room for several (~15) backups. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ron Hudson" <rhudson(a)cnonline.net> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 2:30 PM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95

I don't think so ... I've been using Exabyte drives for about 12 years now and while I've had a few of them break over the years, I've never had an incident of wierd or unpredictable behavior of any sort. I've had a few read errors, and with over 250 drives "out there" being used every day, I've had no complaints about performance or reliability. What's more, I'm not silly enough to rely on experience drawn from only one manufacturer's product. I've tried the various Win9x backup programs with drives from Tandberg, Wangtek, Seagate, Iomega, Sony, Archive, and a few others I can't recall at the moment. I've also tried devices other than tape. I've tried Worm drives ... but nothing seems to work particularly well with Win9x. The MITechie should probably have stopped smoking that rope long enough to straighten out for a moment and read the documentation that comes with the drives. Had he done so, he'd have known about the extensive and verbose error reporting that's available and the thorough test and verification procedures the mfg. provides. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Allain" <allain(a)panix.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 6:18 PM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95

I'm still using, regularly, and daily, the same tapes that I started using back in '90-'91 when I started using Exabyte drives. I use SONY, DIC, Exabyte (really pbl SONY) Maxell, Verbatim, and other makers' tapes, and, aside from tapes damaged in drives with defective BOT/EOT sensors, I've not lost a single tape in over a decade. I do complete system backups on my system, via the LAN, every day. This requires two tapes, which I manage by using two drives. I've been using the same tapes for my dailies since day 1, though I do weeklies and monthlies on other tapes, and, in fact, using different drives. YMMV, I guess, but I think I've exceeded the 100 overwrites claim on many of my tapes. So far, the only tape I've been unable to use to recover data on it has been one that my dog ate when she was a puppy. I removed the tape and installed it in an undamaged cartridge and did find a couple of files I couldn't recover. There may have been others, since there were certainly unreadable segments (where there were holes in the tape). I don't think the media maker will take responsibility for that. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doc" <doc(a)mdrconsult.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 11:28 PM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95 error procedures

IIRC, GHOST has the problem that it won't deal directly with large drives, and that it expects to deal with media essentially identical to what's being backed up. I don't have a removable media disk drive with 100 GB capacity yet, but since there are problems with disks for backup under WIndows anyway, I'll have to wait for something for TAPE or DVD-R to come out. What I'm after, of course, is scheduled backup that doesn't require any human interaction at all, other than daily removal of the backup media from the previous backup. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doc" <doc(a)mdrconsult.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 12:43 PM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95 bucks

Sadly, I've found a few weaknesses in the VERITAS solution. It's almost to the point of reaching 10% of success, though no other Windows software, I've had so far has gotten that far. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Chase" <vaxzilla(a)jarai.org> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 1:58 PM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95 There's a Netware-based solution that came with my AHA3985 that shows some promise. I may get around to it some day.

Frankly, I don't remember exactly what the reason was, why I rejected Ghost for backup applications. However, the point I've been trying to get at is that it's not so much that various tape drives, or the SCSI subsystem interface, don't work properly, but, rather, that the OS doesn't seem to support non-disk storage devices very well, and that ALL the backup applications seem to suffer from the same set of problems. In one case, the application's assessment of the target disk drive was several orders of magnitude off the mark, while, in others, the task seems never to end, in some cases. Getting the restore operation to work is another problem. Under Win9x, tape backup applications, and not just in the context of SCSI tape drives, seem to have difficulty in reading their own writing. I have no idea why this might be, but I've observed it in case after case. Win9x's predisposition to marking every disk drive it "sees" is sufficient reason not to use disk devices for backup. While nothing prevents tape from storing a virus that's recorded on the drive being backed up, it is protected never executed as part of the backup/restore cycle. Likewise, recordable DVD-R's hold out some promise, though they're too limited in capacity to serve for full system backup on most modern systems. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Geoff Reed" <geoffr(a)zipcon.netTo: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.orgSent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 11:02 PM Subject: Re: ot... at it again scsi tape drive in windows 95 and anyway, human I seem to remember something along those lines. I think it expects to find a target drive identical to the one being replicated, too, which limits its usefulness for system backup. I've bought all the Seagate/Veritas backup software I'm going to buy until I see a case of their stuff working properly. So far, I've yet to see a Seagate/Veritas product that works beyond the GUI, and while they look good, I've got to see function. I have a client with about 150 essentially identical systems that have to be backed up every week, and that's shown me that the majority of backup applications (100% of the ones I've tried) suffer or that it's the simple incogruity between the terms "software" and "engineering" but I think it lies somewhere between those. It's probably well to keep in mind that the backup provided with Win98 is a Seagate product that M$ bought from them. It looks suspiciously like the early "Backup Executive" product, which didn't work particularly well, and, quite stupidly, opened new files on the system drive, thereby rendering it incapable of a successful backup of that drive. There's clearly a weakness in the OS relating to the SCSI subsystem. One way in which this shows up is that the OS recognizes and lists a drive it sees on the SCSI chain, yet fails to make it available for the backup program. This is really frustrating when one knows a drive to be fully functional and routinely uses it under DOS and NT, yet can't use it with Win9x. Dick