> 
> Hi,
> I attempted to make a bootable tape by using dd to put first miniroot.fs 
> and then root.cpio onto a TK-50.  At this stage, I just wanted to test 
> and see if it would actually boot, etc., before I decide to blow away my 
> hard disk.
> 
> Anyway, I did everything per the instructions, but it won't boot from the 
> tape.  Is there something special I need to do to the tape to make it 
> bootable, or should writing miniroot.fs to the beginning of the tape be 
> enough?
> 

It should be, but for me it didn't work either; I have a 'portable'
TK50 drive with SCSI that I plugged into several unix boxes but none
really liked the TK50 drive to write data to; small files it
could handle, so it seemed, but got mutilated in the process and
the vax wouldn't boot with the tape. Writing even larger images would
cause IO errors (no, SCSI termination *was* installed =) ).
Eventually I ended up VMS copying the images to the TK 50 on
a VAX running VMS (see also my earlier posting on this mailinglist.
I also suspect that with the next snapshot a small explanation of how to 
do this will be included.

BTW: Don't forget that TK50 and 'TK70 tapes' look alike, but the
drives are really different and a TK70 drive can write data with 
higher density. A TK50 drive will usually be unable to read a tape
that was written by a TK70 drive.

Michel.