>On Mon, 30 Dec 1996 10:42:36 +0200 (EET) 
> Jukka Marin <jmarin@pyy.jmp.fi> wrote:

> > 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 13-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.

If anyone is interested in the tape changing scripts, I can learn where
they are and make them available by ftp.

Laine