[HECnet] TX88/DLT 4000 use in VMS

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2011-10-15 21.23, Mark Benson wrote:
Hi,

I've been trying not to post random questions here, but I have to ask so I can decide if I should put this drive in storage or clean it up and buy a couple of tapes for it.

I have a Compaq DLT4000 series 20/40 GB tape drive (also known as a Tx88 in DEC parlance I think?) in an external cabinet (a big old lump) with HD50 SCSI ports on the back. It's a nice piece of engineering, very much still DEC-esque in it's build quality and no-nonsense construction.

I basically would like to know if it would be supported in either VMS 7.3 on a VAX or VMS 8.3 on an Alpha, and perhaps how to utilise it if it is. I am used to using 'tar' and 'mt' on UNIX but never looked at using tapes *inside* the OS on VMS.

My guess is that it will work just fine. VMS supports tapes over SCSI, and this is just another tape over SCSI.
As for how yuo use it, that is up to you. BACKUP can write backups to it, or you can initialize and mount it, and just copy files to/from it like any other device (well, not like any other, since tapes have some different characteristics, but it will pretty much work as you would expect). DIR works on such tapes, but you cannot delete files, nor modify existing files.

Or you can just mount it foreign, and do whatever you want on it at a low level with your own programs...

	Johnny