[chulofiasco]

While exploring the land of IRIX and trying out various bits of hardware, I decided to try out a DDS4 Seagate drive.

Armed with instruction manual in hand, I boldly went off to add a new entry for a tape drive in the scsi config file.

After completing all of the instructions, the autoconfig wouldn’t rebuild the kernel to support the drive.

Of course, I was beside myself, as this was supposed to get her to pop. Unsuccessful, I put it in the box and recently attempted to install it once again.

Once again, only to be met with failure.

Hip to the Google, I went looking for an answer, because I couldn’t (but, then again, maybe I could) be the only ass trying to install this drive in an IRIX environment.

I didn’t find very much from archived chatter out in the wild, (which is what prompted me to write this post; I apologize for it being a bit verbose, I was smoking some bud before I got on the train home, and I’ve got my focus), but I did stumble upon a random Seagate manual addendum hidden away in a manual cache.

(https://usermanual.wiki/Quantum/QuantumD...41480/view)

There was a mistake in the installation guide, and in the above document, were so kind to offer this:

SGI UNIX

Wherever the text “05573” (as in “DAT 05573”) appears in the configuration text, it should be replaced by “06240”.

Also in configuring Irix V6.5, the following text string:

40, 12*60, 12*60, 12*60, 512, 512*512,

is incorrect and should be replaced by:

40, 12*60, 12*60, 12*60, 3*3600, 512, 512*512,

(There are additional instructions for other operating systems as well, should one be in need.)

Oddly enough, while making the original changes, and after querying the drive, I might have been able to figure this out without actually having found the document.

If you query the unconfigured drive, it responds with “06240” model number, and the removal of the “3*3600” seemed odd, as many of the other tape drives featured it. Not knowing enough about what it actually means, I wasn’t sure my opinion was actually valid.

Thanks for bearing with me — hopefully someone will eventually find this useful. =D