Dear lazyweb: SCSI adapters

[yesthattom]

I have a LVD SCSI tape unit that I would like to connect to my PC running FreeBSD 5.x. The scsi card I have reads:

ahc0: port 0xbc00-0xbcff mem 0xe6044000-0xe6044fff irq 21 at device 9.0 on pci2
aic7880: Ultra Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/253 SCBs


I don’t think that this is LVD. What card should I buy that will give me decent LVD performance?

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

There is pretty much zero chance that a tape drive is going to come anywhere near close to eating the full bandwidth of even a 40mbps U/W SCSI controller, nevermind a 320mbps LVD controller.

[mhalligan.livejournal.com]

It's hard to go wrong with Adaptec.. Remember that LVD needs that funky terminated cable that's really expensive.

[penk.livejournal.com]

"INSTALL LINUX!"

(sorry, had to say it)

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

For my tape library (LVD) I got an Adaptec 2940 Ultra2 for like 20 bux on eBay.

The cables cost me more like $120 from cables-to-go with the terminator (active).

It seems to come up just fine with FreeBSD 6.2:

# camcontrol devlist
at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,ch0)
at scbus0 target 1 lun 0 (sa0,pass1)

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Which tape library did you end up getting? (If I lose this bid on ebay, I might just look for the same model as you have. That way we can exchange tapes which might be useful if, say, mine died you'd be able to do a restore for me.)

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Wait, I just searched for that Sony on ebay and it was around $5,000. Dude, I could never afford that. Did I search for the model correctly?

Heck, I should encrypt my backups and email them to my account on your machine.

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

I got a Sony LIB162 on eBay for $300+s/h. :)

It's got AIT-2 tape drives (two of them), and holds 16 tapes in the carousel.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Seconded. I've got an LVD DLT tape drive that I used to connect to either my a sparc or a PC. The SCSI card I used under FreeBSD was a random Adaptec LVD model that I found cheap.

If you (yesthattom) need 'em and if I can find them I may have a couple of cables of various connector types and LVD active terminators I could send you. I used random cables and bought a couple of LVD terminators.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

$300? Awesome!

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Ditto on the cables: I've got a ton of them, currently sitting outside my office in building 43. Happy to put them aside for you.