60M QIC incompatibilities between Sun-3s?

[Jeff Weber]

shollen%odin.Wright.EDU at relay.cs.net (Sheila Hollenbaugh) writes:
>Recently we have had a problem with tape compatibility between 60M QIC
>tape drives on Sun systems.  The systems are a 3/280 and two 3/60s, all
>running Sun-OS 3.X.  The symptoms are as follows:  the 280 cannot read tar
>tapes which are written by the 60's, but the 60's can read tar tapes
>written by the 280.
>...

1/4in tape of the type that Sun sells is not spec'd to be capable of going
between machines.  It is spec'd to be able to read back into the same
machine that wrote the type.

This little bit of info bit us big time when we couldn't distribute our
product.  The best you can do is to buy a drive qualifier that checks that
your drives are very close to spec and then they should be able to pass
tapes between them.  It seems that each drive is a little off and it shows
between machines.  We had the same problems as you spoke of....

	Jeff