HELP: Archive FasTape and Gateway 2000 386-25

[jrs2p at amsun20.apma.Virginia.EDU]

Hi Folks,

I have a tape drive question, but first a little background...

Last week I received the 386 system I ordered from Gateway.  Everything
appeared to be fine, with the one exception that the HD controller in the
machine was an "Ultrastor Ultra 12(F)" caching controller, and the one
listed on the invoice and packing slip was a Western Digital WD1007.  A call
to Gateway revealed that they didn't have any WD1007's in stock currently,
and that I could switch when they did get them.  So that seems ok.

I plan to run unix (probably ESIX) on the machine, and wanted to install a
tape drive which could interchange DC600 tapes written (with tar?) on the
SUN 3/260's used around here.  Has anyone done this?

To make a long story short, I got a tape drive and can't seem to get it
working.  Can anyone help???


The System:
	Gateway 2000 386DX-25
	Micronics 64K cache Motherboard
	8 Meg of 80 ns RAM
        80387DX-25
	Ultrastor Ultra 12(F) ESDI hard disk controller
	Microscience 152 Meg ESDI hard drive
	1.2 5.25 inch floppy drive
	1.44 3.5 inch floppy drive
	Everex 2400 baud internal modem (COM1)
	Logitech C9 serial mouse (COM2)
	Unused serial port (COM3)
	Parallel port (LPT1)
	Game port w/joystick
	ATI Wonder VGA (512k)
	NEC 3D

	In case you're interested, the above cost $4670.00 including
	2 day air shipping, not including the modem, gameport/joystick,
	Logitech mouse and 80387.

The Tape Drive:
	Archive ST600 60 Meg tape drive (FasTape)
	SC499-R controller
	FasTape software for MS-DOS


I've tried everything I can think of, everything Archive's technical
support can think of, and at least the first round of suggestions from
Gateway's tech's.  This includes:

	1. Changing the base port address to 220h (from 200h) so that it
		doesn't interfer with the game port.
	2. Changing IRQ to 5 (from 3) so that it doesn't interfer with
		COM2 (mouse)
	3. Disable caching in Ultra 12(F) HD controller
	4. Slowing the system down to 6 MHz.
	5. Every imaginable combination of 1-4.

I even tried turning off the motherboard caching.

I sometimes get a message "Tape board or software not addresses properly"
(or something like that) and then the DOS prompt, or sometimes I don't
get any message and the system just hangs.

---------


Please e-mail to me and I will post the solution if one is found.


==========================================================================

 Jonathan R. Senning, Graduate Student               jrs2p at Virginia.EDU
 Department of Applied Mathematics                   (804) 924-4580
 University of Virginia
 Charlottesville, VA