I wrote...
> Have you ever mixed 8mm tapes (8200) with Sparcs and Macs and succeeded?
>
> I am trying to find anyone who has written Exabyte 8200 tapes using a Macintosh and
> read them with a Sparcstation Exabyte.
>
> I know for instance that the old Sun 386i's could not read Exabyte tapes written
> with a Sparcstation... before I commit to purchasing an Exabyte for a Mac data
> system and Sparc analysis system (separated by thousands of miles) I would really
> like to find someone who knows if this will work.
>
My main interest is getting big mac data files over onto a Sparc using 8mm tape...
Ric (<ric@cs.arizona.edu> "Ric Anderson" pointed me to Retrospect software that runs
on macs and backs up to Exabyte, but their data format is proprietary, and they
would not elaborate on if I could read the tape on the Sun end on the data transfer.
I got a pointer from Nancy at Relax Technologies in the SF area to call someone at
the company 'Diversified IO' to find out more about macs handling Exabyte.
I called someone there who probably wrote the Mac's "SoftbackupII" (and the earlier
version, I presume), and he told me his data format for Exabytes: fixed 1024 block
size (native to Exabyte 8200's, I know), file ID in the first block and directory
info in the second block, and the file in the rest of it... so judicious use of
SoftBackupII, writing ONE file on the Exabyte and reading it on the Sun
(linked to the Mac by FedExNet :-)) with "dd" SHOULD work.
Well, there's a 30 day mbg from Relax on the Exabyte & software, so we can return it if
it does not work.
This solution is a bit of a kluge, but then the files I want to transfer are
HUGE data files, so it works for me.
My mac collaborator will buy a Sparc one day, and then it will actually be easy to
transfer data, but that's a different story.
Many thanks to
Stefan Mochnacki stefan@centaur.astro.utoronto.ca
Ric (<ric@cs.arizona.edu> "Ric Anderson"
Chris Bulle chris@invmms.WorldBank.Org
Jim Guyton guyton@rand.org
If you don't hear from me on this topic within a month assume it worked...
If I don't summarize now I will forget all about summarizing.
anand@ociw.edu Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena CA (818) 304 0221
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