[Info-vax] Modern VMS (e.g. V8.4) tape installation?

[Ken Fairfield]

On Sunday, April 29, 2012 11:41:28 AM UTC-7, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> On 4/29/2012 10:09 AM, Steven Schweda wrote:
> >> Would a DDS tape also do, provided it could be prepared
> >> accordingly?
> >> (related to the other thread on the MV2000)
> >
> >     Also "do" what, exactly?  I seem to remember doing
> > Standalone BACKUP using an Exabyte 8mm (8200?) tape drive
> > (probably on a VAX 4000 model 300), but I wouldn't bet on a
> > MicroVAX/VAXstation 2000 working with any tape drive other
> > than a TK50Z-FA/GA.
> 
> ISTR that most, if not all, of those "cartridge" tape drives were "high
> maintenance".  The 8mm tapes were really high maintenance.

I don't remeber having any trouble reading an 8mm tape,
but I certainly agree that the tape *drives* were high
maintenance (that's how I read Richard's post, even though
it's not what he wrote).

We had a pair of 8mm drives connected to HSC50's.  Pardon
me, but I don't recall the 3rd party vendor who made those
after two decades have passed...  I do recall very clearly
that we were regularly swapping out one or the other of the
drives.  They'd fail about once/month, IIRC.  (Don't ask
me the failure mode, sorry, I don't remember.)

We also attempted to use one of these drives as for data
logging in our data acquisition system.  I wish I remembered
the details, I don't, but it seems we may have had a 3rd
party SCSI adapter or similar in our VAX 11/785.  Problem
was the drive would go into an "allocated to another user"
state regularly and couldn't be recovered without a system
reboot.  Yes, that can happen with any tape drive, but it
happened *frequently* with the 8mm, enough that we couldn't
use it.  Oh, and it never happened with the 6250 bpi drives.

    -Ken