SI 9 track problems

[George Robbins]

In article <8 at pserv.CFSMO.Honeywell.COM> stevem%pserv at src.honeywell.com writes:
> We have an SI 9625 dual ported tape drive with Aviv controllers on a 
> Microvax II.  We are experiencing problems when using cpio on multi 
> tape archives.  Cpio will prompt for the tapes on write and everything 
> seems to be working ok.  But when reading the archive, cpio goes out of 
> phase when it starts to read the second tape...
...
> Any suggestions of where to go from here?  

Well, I'd actually try it on a DEC drive and see if you get the same results.
If not, then dump the end of the first tape and the beginning of the second
tape and see how they differ.  One possibility would be that the SI drive isn't
successfully doing a backspace & write eof or whatever trick DEC is using to
indicate end of tape.

Another possibility would be to look at the portable archive (pax) utility that
Usenix has developed.  It handles both cpio and tar formats, and is available
in source form from various archives.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr at cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)