QICTAPE Announcement
11 messages in this thread
Reid,
A. If you work for Progressive, why don't you know the list price?
B. If you don't work for Progressive, why are you posting an
announcement for them?
C. Why not DC6xxx tapes and allow alternate drives up to 525Meg
capacity per tape?
D. QICTAPE can't be copyrighted, it's in common use by several
companies (the name…not the program) and has been for quite a while.
Don,
A. No, I do not work for Progressive and thus do not know the list
price. Even if I did work for them, I would not know as even
they
have not come to a final determination as to the price of this
product.
B. I am a principal owner of M.V. Micro, who has contracted with
PP&S to
develop the hardware design and write the software for QICTAPE.
We
suggested a formal announcement might be made on CIS since the
product is complete, only waiting for cables to be made before
shipping can be begin. They agreed…
C. The DC6000 series of tapes is an ENTIRELY different
configuration.
Not only is the format of the cartridges different, but the
drive is
so different that entirely different software needs to be
written.
The larger capacity systems use helical-scan technology, thus
they
use far more complex software and require better data transfer
rates
than are available with this system. To put it simply, your
question
is much like asking "why not design an accelerator board for the
Amiga so that a user can plug in an '020, '030, or '040 CPU into
the
board, depending on his needs?" It can't be done!!
D. Obviously the name QICTAPE may be in use somewhere in the
industry.
One does not copyright a name, rather names are trademarked.
Our
copyright for QicTape refers to the software and hardware
design, NOT
the name.
Am I to believe that there is some sense of hostility in your message?
After all, I have only posted a notice of a new product that should be of
interest to many of the members on this forum. I fail to understand why my
relationship with PP&S has been questioned, especially since you may not
know anything about our contractural agreements and reponsibilities. I
have nothing against you or
[ MORE ]
Reid,
No…absolutely no hostility. As a sysop, it's part of my job to
make sure the announcements here are not only real, but also from someone
who is authorized to make such an announcement. From your message, I got a
hint you may not have been associated with Progressive. That turns out to
be true…but since you're associated with the software end of the
cooperative venture…that's just as good.
I was simply curious as to why only the smaller sized cartridges
and drives are supported. We use DC6xxx (and DC600 which are the same
size) tapes at work and I enjoy the convenience of 120Meg on a single tape.
As to your comment they use helical scan techniques…at least on
our tape drives at work (20, 60 and 120 Meg per cart), that's not true, the
heads are fixed (other than a sliding height adjustment for track
centering).
Don
Reid,
What port is used for this device? The parallel or serial port???
I would strongly advise designing something that would work on larger
tape media (for us guys with more than 40 megs to back up. I realize that
it would be better than floppies, but an unattended DCron like backup using
one tape would be much better!
-RSL-
The QICtape runs off the floppy port.
Ron
Ron,
Thanks for the info. Using the floppy port is sure "generic", I just
wonder what the thru-put of such a device is.
I guess I'll bide my time, until C-A startsd selling the tape streamer
that will be optional for the A3000UX.
-RSL-
The Jumbo may turn out to be a real good value; I hope so.
Ron
Just don't look for massive speed. Ask MS-DOS users with QIC-40 floppy port
based tape units. You don't get speed, and I don't think multitasking while
using the tape backup program would be a good idea. The MS-Dos units do
some wierd things with the floppy ports.
[ continuation ]
any of the members here, and had hoped this may be a good place to post the
notice about QICTAPE. I trust you feel the same way, though you may have
some reason not to.
Reid Bishop- M.V. Micro
Sounds reasonable to me…. Can I expect to be able to adapt my existing
backup (CMS 60Meg QIC on our Compaq) for use with our Amigas? Sure would
be nice to save the 600 or so.
Ken Loss-Cutler