PS/2 AIX Tape Utilities & IBM external tape

[Ed Clarke/10240000]

>From article <5272 at hydra.Helsinki.FI>, by porttiki at cs.Helsinki.FI
> A week ago I asked here, if anyone knows how to make the IBM external
> tape streamer faster when used with the IBM Tape Utilities software. 
> Nobody answered. 
> Does anyone know how to contact the Sytron company which makes the
> software for IBM?

Ah Ha!  You didn't say that you were using DOS under AIX!  The
SY-TOS utilities were developed for an operating system that does
not normally support tape devices (DOS).  You can contact Sytron at:

     Sytron Corporation
     135 Maple Street
     Marlboro, MA 01752

If you're going to back up AIX filesystems, you might do better with
the AIX backup or tar commands.  I admit that they're not as nice to
use as SY-TOS, but they work fairly well if you use a big enough block
size.  Another method that I've seen is to pipe the tar or backup output
through the 'dd' command to the tape drive.  'dd' seems to block things
a little better.  

Perhaps some AIX guru would be kind enough to give an exact sequence of
commands for this?
-- 
               | 'shasha', the word for 'senile', meant not just old
Ed Clarke      | and weak-minded, but also implied impotence, incontinence,
acheron!clarke | coprophagic habits and a tendency to indulge in a desire
               | to practice fellatio on dead sheep.  Among other things.