Aviv 3480 cartridge tapes; anyone have them?

[Arnold D. Robbins]

I work in the data center at Emory University, where the central system is
an IBM 3090.  We also happen to have a VMS DEC Vax 8550 and a Sun 4/280.
The IBM system will be switching the new fancy tape cartridges, 3480s if
I'm not mistaken.  DEC is OEM-ing the IBM tape drive and offering it for
vaxen so the 8550 will be moving to these tapes as well.

Aviv corp. offers a tape drive made by Storage Technology for the same
cartridges, and a controller and device driver for Sun systems.  Since we
wish to use just one kind of tape media on all our computers, we are
planning on bringing in the Aviv cartridge drive as well.

My question then, is there anyone out there who has one of these drives
and controllers already?  What have your experiences with it been?  All
feedback, both positive and negative, will be appreciated.

Please don't bother telling me about Exabytes or other backup media; Unix
machines are the only ones that use them right now and our data center is
already committed to this particular technology for the IBM and DEC sides
(you know, the "real" computers).

Please reply by mail and I'll summarize, as I have not been able to keep
up with the volume on comp.sys.sun lately, so I will probably miss any
posted responses.

Much thanks,
 
Arnold Robbins -- Emory University Computing Center | Unix is a Registered
DOMAIN: arnold at unix.cc.emory.edu		    | Bell of AT&T Trademark
UUCP: gatech!emoryu1!arnold  PHONE: +1 404 727-7636 | Laboratories.
BITNET: arnold at emoryu1	     FAX:   +1 404 727-2599 |         -- Donn Seeley