MO support

[Don Y]

jim stephens wrote:
> Sector size does mess up things.  If you are not
> using the device for booting, then it should not be
> an issue.

Well, if I can't build a filesystem on it, then it's
sort of a moot point!  :>

> I never saw anything but 512 byte / sector work
> with any windows or dos version.  the drivers dont
> have any way to change the blocksize.  I didnt
> see the problem you saw when using 1024 byte
> media, it just would spit it back out and do nothing.

I am pretty sure the Windows machine had *no* problems.
The UN*X boxen all seem to gag on the != 512 byte
sector size...

> Solaris should have no problem with this, and
> of course booting wont be a problem there.

I am almost 100% certain Solaris did NOT like the
1024/2048 byte sectors.  I will try to make time this
weekend to test each medium/drive on a variety of
machines just to be sure.

> There is a jukebox program, I'll have to air out
> the brain cells and try to remember what that
> was called.  If this rings any bells with others on
> this list, chime in.  The package I'm thinking about
> is a public domain thing, i believe it works for
> MO libaries, but is also written to issue select
> commands to tape libraries.  YMMV.  it is
> a good basis to start with.
> It is not going to support different volumes
> which auto select like the Pioneer cd 6 or
> 18 pack drives do, or the NEC scsi cdrom
> drives do, which would be cute, but is only
> framework to open a scsi target id, and issue
> a select command to pull and swap in a different
> media to a drive.  I recall that someone had
> used it with MO jukeboxes but I only saw it
> used with DLT libraries. (Breece Hill).

I can always use the front panel controls on the JB
to move media to/from the drives.   I am more concerned
with trying to get full *use* of the media (i.e. not
throwing away half of each physical sector)

Thanks!
--don