DDS2 and DDS5

[greg woods]

I am running VMS 8.3 and have recently installed a DAT72 drive on my DS15. I works fine. I was given a 4mm tape that is in VMS backup DDS2 format, and of course it does not load. I found an old HP sureStore8 drive, and obtained the proper physical connectors (ie from old SCSI centronics 50 to vhdci) an old SCSI terminator and rebooted, and VMS does not see the drive. I am not sure the drive/terminator are working. Bottom line is I need the files (probably only a one time transfer) on the DS15. One solution is to find (an HP center?) a VMS system that I can take the DDS2 tape and rewrite it to a DAT72 tape? OR can I find a an NT or UNIX system with a working drive, copying the ANSI files, and move to VMS? Thanks

[Ian Miller.]

Welcome to the itrc forum Greg.
If you say where you are then someone closer may be able to help.

What is the SCSI interface card to which you have connected the HP surestore8 DAT drive?

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Not on subject but good to know.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg50457&locale=en_US&taskId=101&prodSeriesId=81997&prodTypeId=12169

Wim

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

And according to
http://openview.hp.com/products/storage_data_protector/device_matrices/Device_Support_Matrix_DP55.pdf

the surestore 8/80 (if that's what you have)wasn't supported by VMS.

Wim

[greg woods]

to Ian - I am in PA, US; the port is an external SCSI port that is (I assume) on the mother board, it is not a PCI card.

to Wim - Thaks for the info - I will search for a compatible drive

[Hoff]

As a result of another recent discussion of porting some DDS media forward to somewhat more sane media, I went and scrounged a TLZ09 drive which probably still works, and can burn CDs in various formats. (Yeah, I know, CD-R isn't exactly altogether sane, too.)

As a rule, DDS media is relatively unreliable, and the drives themselves can be spotty.

Others have mentioned that your bus is likely incorrect; over or under terminated. I'd put the DDS at the end of the bus here, and would tend to keep other stuff off the bus. Make sure the DDS has a unique id, etc.

The Centronics stuff was usually SCSI-1; a long way back in SCSI universe.

I've also access to a Mac OS X Server (Unix) SCSI-capable box, and a copy of vmsbackup I've ported forward to be compatible with "current" OpenVMS BACKUP ODS-2 and ODS-5 capabilities and requirements.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs LLC