RamFAST Rev. C and Archive Viper 150?

[jdb8042@blkbox.COM (John D. Baker)]

I recently came into possession of an Archive Viper 150 SCSI tape
drive.  I've been experimenting with it on my RamFAST Rev. C card
(CPU is Apple //e, hard disk is DEC RZ23).

Has anyone else ever tried to use this tape drive with a RamFAST?

To get the tape to do anything at all, I had to enable Parity on
the tape drive.  Telling the RamFAST utility to format the drive
just causes it to bang it's head-height adjuster against the lower
stop a few times and then the tape jerks back and forth a couple of
times.

I'm told that what it actually did was a RESET and that the Viper
150 and the DC6150 tapes format on the fly.

At this, I simply tried backing up a scratch partition with the
RamFAST utility's Backup command.  I selected the partition and
was soon presented with a message that said how much had been done,
how much was left to do and an error count of 0.  I had the option
to choose the <<OK>> highlight bar, but I just ignored it.

At this, the drive commenced running back and forth for a very
short span near the beginning of the tape.  Each time, the drive
would stop and bang it's head-height lead-screw agains the lower
stop.  The progress indicator showed that yet another 32 blocks had
been backed up and the error count rose by one each time.

When the progress indicator reached 1472 blocks (and 43 errors),
the tape took off flying to about halfway it's total length, came
back to the beginning and took off flying down the tape again,
this time copying data (or so it claimed).  This time it went
clear to the end, paused, and started back, copying the rest of
the partition (or so it would seem).

I could never find evidence that anything was ever actually written
to the tape.  I certainly couldn't install any kind of partitioning
on the tape and nothing ever showed up in the GS/OS VOLUMES listing
in the main utility screen.

I should note that I tried the drive without the parity enable jumper
installed.  Then, attempts to format failed immediately with no
tape motion whatsoever.  When it failed, I was immediately shown
a full rack of 12 partition all 32MB in size.  I couldn't affect
any of them, however.

So:  Is it possible to use an Archive Viper 150 tape drive with a
RamFAST/SCSI Rev. C and Apple //e?  If so, what am I missing?

Thanks.


John D. Baker ->A TransWarp'802'd Apple //e CardZ180 Z-System nut //
Internet:  jdb8042@tam2000.tamu.edu, @blkbox.com, jdbaker@taronga.com
BBS:  JOHN BAKER on PIC of the Mid-Town [(713) 961-5817] 1:106/31,
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http://tam2000.tamu.edu/~jdb8042/