Writing HP cartridge tapes on a Sun 3

[Scott Wilson]

In article <614 at ednor.UUCP> cgf at ednor.UUCP (Chris Faylor) writes:
>
>Does anybody know if it is possible to produce a tar tape on a Sun
>that is readable on an HP 300?  It seems that the HP uses some kind
>of strange format...

I tried this for a while one day and finally gave up.  I think
HP uses some different kind of format.  We couldn't even get the
tape drive to accept blank tapes that we use for the Sun (the error
light would come on after 30 secs).  It seemed the only blank tapes
we could get the drive to accept were those that came from HP and
I think they said something about special formatting.  I also heard
that HP writes the tape backwards from other people, this is why it
takes up to 90 seconds to load the tape because it has to forward (rewind)
to the end (beginning) of the tape.  I don't know if any of this is really
true, but it sounds crazy to me.

In short we gave up and tried to transfer data with ethernet, of course
the HP was thin ethernet and the Sun thick so ...

BTW, this happened before I worked at Sun and my general stupidity
should not be construed as a reflection on this fine company.

--
Scott Wilson		arpa: swilson at sun.com
Sun Microsystems	uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA