MO support

[Don Y]

jim stephens wrote:
> Don Y wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have several (different) MO drives -- including
>> a small jukebox.
>>
>> But, it seems that most OS's don't have support
>> for them -- usually the BLOCKSIZE != 512 issue
>> is the killer.
>>
>> Amusingly, *Windows* seems to talk to all of them
>> (but that is my last choice!).  I believe Linux
>> will, as well (but I don't want to run Linux).
>>
>> [I think I would prefer to get them running
>> under Solaris or NetBSD]
>>
>> So, given that these devices have been around for
>> ages, what was talking to them?
>>
> 
> don,
> from your list above what "most" os's dont support
> the MO devices?  I dont recall having any problem
> with SCSI attached MO drives that I have used since
> at least with PC platforms, they are mapped to being
> bios supported units.
> 
> Maybe non PC platforms?  I used them with Solaris
> on sparcstations, and with HPUX, and AIX on their
> respective platforms to interchnge data.
> 
> There was a jukebox support program distributed
> that I used one time that would issue commands to
> the jukebox devices, but most of the time I used
> MO drives only.

The jukebox control would be icing on the cake.

I've just not had any luck getting machines
to recognize the 1024 or 2048 byte sector sizes.
*If* they talk to the drive, they end up treating
it AS IF the sectors were 512 bytes -- so you end
up only seeing 1/2 or 1/4 of the total disk capacity.

I've seen ADD ON products for MO support on things
like Slowaris... but, it doesn't seem to be native.

HPUX *may* be an exception (the JB is an HP product)
but I don't run HPUX... :-/

Or, am I just missing some little "trick"??  :-(

Thanks,
--don