Robin Grayson wrote:

> On 1 Sep 2005 03:35:08 -0400, Bela Lubkin <filbo@armory.com> wrote:
>
> | In made-up numbers, this driver has a 95% chance of working perfectly on
> | UW714 and at least 85% chance on OSR6 (90% chance the driver will work;
> | plus a small additional risk that it may include user-level RAID
> | management utilities and those may have problems).
>
> Well I think those odds are good enough for me ... I didn't want RAID,
> the Adaptec support person said "just disable that on the card"
>
> To be honest this card would be a sledge-hammer to crack a nut; I just
> want a "simple" host adapter with external scsi so I can plug in an
> external tape drive and do a super-tar backup of this machine.
>
> It's not a critical machine by any means, backups are done of
> source-code and data are done by backing up to an image file and then
> ftp'ing that onto another box - whilst not ideal, it's ok for what's
> on this machine.
>
> However going forward, I want to install OSR6 and put in place a
> backup device.

I would be a bit more worried about the idea of using a RAID card for a
tape drive, than the driver-vs-OS-version issues. RAID cards and
drivers have a poor track record with respect to SCSI devices other than
hard disks. I have no specific information about the Adaptec you
mentioned, just a general sense of unease...

Going backwards in the technology timeline, you might try an Adaptec
29160LP. That's an Ultra160-to-PCI (not PCI-X) non-RAID card.
amazon.com has them for $250; several vendors on pricewatch.com have it
for <$120. A 29160 has 100% chance of being driver-compatible, and
since it isn't a RAID card, I expect it to support a tape drive
perfectly.

>Bela<