Hi!
Trying to kill the keyboard, [EMAIL PROTECTED] produced:
> Hello ftape project,
Mailing list, that is, you are welcome to join.
> However, I have used up all 4 available IDE slots. I understand that HP
> has a parallel port version of this drive.
I understand that you can drive (at least) up to 8 IDE devices,
if you use additional IDE controlers. You might want to test
that as the parallel port is not a good solution. You also
might look into SCSI; a low-power SCSI-card should be enough
for the data rates needed by a streamer.
> 3) Does ftmt (or mt) support "file marks" ("fsf", for example)
> with such a drive. I must "tar" with multiple volumes.
You'll only use *ft*mt if the tape is (emulating) a flopp tape.
Some parallel port devices actually do use SCSI over parallel
port (the IOMEGA Zip-drives are one example). For SCSI you'd
probably use mtst, but all of them (including mt) do support
file marks, if the man page is not lying all the way.
> 4) Can tapes be formated with "ftformat" or some other Linux
> utility.
You only need to format floppy tapes[1], all other tape
types are formatted on the fly. If it's supported by ftape,
ftformat should work, I think.
> 5) If this drive is not supported, is there a around 5 Gig
> parallel port drive that can at least read Linux "tar"
> generated 3.2 Gig (Travan 3) tapes.
If you need to read Travan 3 tapes you probably cannot use
the drive you have in mind; while Travan 3 drives can read
Travan 2 and Travan 1, this is not true[2] for Travan 4 (also
called NS-8, IIRC) drives[3]. So double check that the drive
you had in mind can actually read Travan 3 tapes!
> What would be its /dev
> entry. And how would I use "mt/ftmt" to skip to a "file mark".
/dev/n?ht[0-9] (IDE tape) or /dev/n?st[0-9](a|l|m)? (SCSI tape)
You'd use (ft)?mt just like before, nothing changed.
-Wolfgang
[1] that is the reason they are extra-sensitive against stretch.
[2] at least not generally
[3] They are not floppy tapes either, IIRC, they mask as
'almost an IDE harddrive' (ATAPI), like your CDrom.
