2 Mar
2005
2 Mar
'05
12:48 p.m.
Next question - anyone think of a good reason why a lot of old tapes I
have containing tar archives seem to hit read errors at around 7.8MB
into the tape?
--
That is the first time the tape reverses direction.
You should always 'retension' the tape before trying to read it
mt -f /dev/st0 retension works under most unix systems.
This runs the tape out, and rewinds to BOT.
If the tapes are old, there is a high probablility the tensioning belt
in the cartridge is going
to break. Keep a few new donor carts around to salvage the belts out of
Be EXTREMELY careful when changing a belt to not damage the tape (it is
very easy to damage
since it is quite thin)
2 Mar
2 Mar
2:33 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-03-02 at 09:48 -0800, Al Kossow wrote:
Next question - anyone think of a good reason why a lot of old tapes I
have containing tar archives seem to hit read errors at around 7.8MB
into the tape?
That is the first time the tape reverses direction.
Ahh - interesting!
You should always 'retension' the tape before
trying to read it
mt -f /dev/st0 retension works under most unix systems.
This runs the tape out, and rewinds to BOT.
Hmm, that works, but doesn't seem to help in this case as far as
reading's concerned (tried with both rewinding and non-rewinding
devices). I wonder if there is some incompatibility when reading 60MB
tapes in a 150MB device.
I've certainly got a native 60MB SCSI QIC unit in my Tek that I should
try, assuming I haven't got one already sitting on the shelf where I
keep spare hard drives and floppy drives...
Possible it's also a Linux oddity with the tape subsystem I suppose.
Blocking factor doesn't seem relevant as the unit's reading *something*.
I'll see if I can find jumper settings for this 150MB drive too, just in
case there's a "work with 60meg tapes" jumper missing ;)
cheers
J.
4:42 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-03-02 at 19:33 +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:
I've certainly got a native 60MB SCSI QIC unit in
my Tek that I should
try
that's made all the difference. Either I have a bad 150MB drive
(although it's read several 150MB tapes fine), or it just doesn't like
60MB tapes for whatever reason.
Six of the seven tapes I had kicking around read fine with the Tek's
60MB drive. The seventh, which possibly has the most interesting stuff
on, hits a few read errors partway through, and is also compressed so I
don't know whether I can recover it. Typical!
Now to see what's actually on all the others. Probably junk. :-)
cheers
Jules
10:50 p.m.
[...QIC
stuff...]
Blocking factor doesn't seem relevant as the unit's reading
*something*. Reply-To: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk,
"General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
I noticed this when I tried to reply and saw both addresses in the To:;
upon checking, I found that Reply-To:.
How it got that way, of course, is a different question.
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