>>> What kind of a DAT drive do you recommend for a NetBSD (1.2/i386) system?
>>> Do we have support for DAT changers 
> 
> On Thu, 2 Jan 1997 10:08:24 GMT, Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
> wrote:
>>This is from the dmesg output of mail.NetBSD.ORG...
> 
>>[ Frobbed to fit 80 columns :-) ]
>>  
>>ahc0: target 5 synchronous at 5.0MHz, offset = 0xf
>>st0 at scsibus0 targ 5 lun 0: <ARCHIVE, Python 28849-XXX, 4.98> SCSI2
>>    1/sequential removable
>>st0: drive empty
>>ch0 at scsibus0 targ 5 lun 1: <ARCHIVE, Python 28849-XXX, 4.98> SCSI2
>>    8/changer removable
>>ch0: 4 slots, 1 drive, 1 picker
> 
>> This is a DDS-1/DC drive and 4-tape changer; a 12-tape magazine is 
available.
>> I purchased this drive from http://www.corpsys.com/ ... I think they
>> only have the DDS-2 versions available now...
> 
> Based on Jason's advice to my earlier query, we purchased one of the
> DDS-2 versions of this drive (Archive 4586NP)(and a 12 tape cartridge)
> from corpsys.com. We now have tar calling a script that switches tapes
> (although the person here who did it found some bugs in tar in the
> meantime - NetBSD should look into updating their tar to the latest
> BTW). It seems to work quite nicely - about 500KB/sec average over a 5
> hour backup of about 10GB with no user intervention.
> 
> Just the other day I saw that www.onsale.com had these for sale by
> auction. Someone here bought two of them for $470 each (we had paid
> $1000 for the first) and the 12 tape cartridge for about $40 or so. I
> just looked and they have another batch of them for sale.

Note that AnDataCo (pronounced "And-a-Taco" (-: ) has software to drive these
DAT changers for both SunOS and Solaris (at least), in case anyone's
interested.  Poke around on www.andataco.com a bit ...

	- Greg