Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!network!ucsd!ucbvax!RICHTER.MIT.EDU!krowitz
From: krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Apollo - Sun TAR transfers
Message-ID: <8908141539.AA08684@richter.mit.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 89 15:39:44 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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From talking to some Sun users who have Exabyte drives, I've gotten
the impression that the SCSI specs are kind of loose. Apparently
even various implementations of the Exabyte drive for the Sun-3 and
Sun-4 systems can not always talk to each other due to variations
in the SCSI driver. Maximum block lengths and the use of "short"
vs. "long" file marks seem to be the problem in most cases. Given
your error message, I'd guess that Workstation Solutions' SCSI
driver is writting longer physical records on the tape than the Sun
and Vax implementations can handle. Terri Long of Wrokstation
Solutions told me that their driver can be coerced into using the
same parameters as the other SCSI drivers by twiddling with
the DDF file in some manner (I think they may have some flags
set in the user-info block which can be changed with the
/com/crddf command). Try calling W.S. to see if you can change
the maximum block size of the driver.

== Dave