ok, in addition to the TLZ04 eating my tape (which may have been a fluke, i
just tried it again, and it seems to work, but that doesn't mean it won't
happen again) i am seeing interesting things with the TK50.

so i run a tar to the TK50.  it seems to do just fine (although it takes a
really long time (think hours):

$ tar -cvf /dev/st3 i386
i386/
i386/base.tgz
i386/boot1.fs
i386/boot2.fs
i386/comp.tgz
i386/etc.tgz

[snip]

gets all the way to xserver.tgz everything seems fine, so since i'm feeling
brave (and don't really care if i destroy a DDS-1 4mm tape or two) i thought
i'd play with the TLZ04 while the TK50 was finishing up.

wonko@wintermute$ telnet tapeboy
Trying 172.16.2.4...
Connected to tapeboy.arkham.ws.
Escape character is '^]'.

and it hangs there.  hmmm, that's odd.  so i pop the console cable on and
fire up tip.

st3(esp1:6:0):  Check Condition on CDB: 0x0a 01 00 00 04 00
    SENSE KEY:  Write Protected                            
 COMMAND INFO:  100663296 (0x6000000)
     ASC/ASCQ:  No Additional Sense Information

is scrolling up my screen.  i mean, millions of them.  the machine can't do
anything else (or maybe it can, but it's taking AGES to do so) so i offline
the TK50 tape by hitting the load/unload button, and the machine starts
behaving normally again.

now, is it just me, or instead of tar trying to do it's job and spewing out
that Check Condition bit, shouldn't tar fail with a read-only message?  i find
this behavior to be very odd.

let me know if i can do anything to figure out why this is happening.

-brian

----- End forwarded message -----

and to make it all better, i tried sending this to port-vax@sunhelp.org, must
be bed time. :) -brian