Using a Sun tape drive under SunOS 4.1.1

[dmitchell@trc.amoco.com (Donald H. Mitchell)]

Slug: Don't bother trying to duplicate the failure.  Symbolics tells me that
they have been more active tracking this problem down than I thought and had
duplicated the failure and have had many similar complaints.  They also said
they've learned a lot about customer support by trying to deal with Sun's.

The upshot: don't try to create tapes on a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1 from a
Symbolics (or is it only Sun 4's?).

Maybe Symbolics can fix this problem by using a different tape access
mechanism?  

Since the error occurs when the Symbolics issues the rewind command, if we
change the rewind to a null op and leave rewinding up to putting the tape in
the drive, would that work?  Does the error occur with any of the other tape
commands?  Does the Symbolics need to rewind the tape anytime but when it's
first put in?

Don Mitchell			dmitchell@trc.amoco.com
Amoco Production Company	(918) 660-4270
Tulsa Research Center
P.O. Box 3385, Tulsa, OK 74102