The Ftape Installation and Usage Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction

This is only one of several sources of documentation for the ftape driver. You may want to read the Ftape-HOWTO (http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Ftape-HOWTO.html) as well as the Ftape FAQ. (http://www.correct.nl/~ftape) The ftape-tools package comes with it own manual. See Top (info file ftape-tools).

If you have installed this package (The Ftape Installation and Usage Guide) locally as part of the The Ftape Manual distribution, then both, the Ftape-FAQ as the Ftape-HOWTO, are installed locally on your computer as well. In this case, hypertext references in this document refer to the locally installed versions instead of the the locations given above which might be more recent. The locally installed versions are dated 21 July 2000.

The ftape packages are available from either the

Ftape home page

or from

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes/.

Development versions and beta releases are available from the Ftape home page only.

ftape is a driver for tape drives that connect to the floppy controller of your computer. There are also special `floppy tape controllers' that operate at a higher speed. But these are (more or less) floppy disk controllers that are located at a hardware address different from the one used by the standard floppy disk controller. Some (all?) of those `high speed controllers' are supported by ftape, namely

Colorado CMS FC-10/FC-20 The Colorado CMS FC-20 controller is supported at 1Mbps only.

Mountain Mach-II

Intel 82078 based floppy disk controllers This includes (but isn't limited to)

Exabyte's high speed controller.

Seagate's (resp. Conner ⁽¹⁾) `CTC-2Mb 2Mb Floppy Controller'

Iomega's `Ditto Dash Controller'

Iomega Ditto EZ 4Mbps controller This is a so called Pnp (Plug and Pray, ehem, Play) extension card. Linux supports the ISA PnP stuff since one of the 2.3.x versions. Earlier versions of Linux need sp special utilities to configure PnP card. E.g. the isapnptools package from the ISA PnP Tools Page.

Rating specifications of those controllers (i.e. `4Mb', `2Mb', `1Mb') are to be understood as `Bits Per Second' NOT `Bytes Per Second'

Besides tape drives connecting to those internal FDC controllers ftape also supports certain kinds of floppy tape drives that connect to the parallel port, namely

The Colorado Trakker parallel port drive Support for this drive was added by Jochen Hoenicke.

Micro Solutions Backpack parallel port floppy tape drives At least the Iomega Ditto product line is supported. Some Exabyte parallel port tape drives -- which in principle also have an interface made by Micro Solutions -- are reported to have problems.

Please refer to the

Ftape-HOWTO ⁽²⁾

for a more detailed listing of supported hardware.

ftape runs under Linux-1.2.13, and Linux-2.0.* up to Linux-2.4.*. Under Linux-2.* it can be used on Intel-x86 machines and on DEC Alpha machines. Ftape probably will not work with Linux-1.2.13 and DEC Alpha, but only with Intel-x86.

If you intend to use ftape with another platform, then I suggest that you try it. And drop me (Claus-Justus Heine) a note, I'm really curious if it works.

You may want to read through the file

[/usr/src/ftape-4.04/]RELEASE-NOTES

for a short revision history of ftape.

What ftape is not:

ftape is not a driver for so called QIC-02, QIC-24 or QIC-150 tape drives. Use

`[/usr/src/linux/]drivers/char/tpqic02.c'

instead.

ftape is not a driver for SCSI tapes. Have a look at

`[/usr/src/linux/]drivers/scsi/st.c'

instead.

ftape is not a driver for ATAPI (ide) tapes. Use

`[/usr/src/linux/]drivers/block/ide-tape.c'

instead.

See the Ftape-HOWTO ⁽³⁾ for a more complete list of supported hardware.

⁽¹⁾ Conner was taken over by Seagate some time ago

⁽²⁾ See http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Ftape-HOWTO.html for a more recent version.

⁽³⁾ See http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Ftape-HOWTO.html for a more recent version.

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`Colorado CMS FC-10/FC-20`	The `Colorado CMS FC-20` controller is supported at 1Mbps only.
`Mountain Mach-II`
`Intel 82078 based floppy disk controllers`	This includes (but isn't limited to) Exabyte's high speed controller. Seagate's (resp. Conner ⁽¹⁾) ``CTC-2Mb 2Mb Floppy Controller`' Iomega's ``Ditto Dash Controller`'
`Iomega Ditto EZ 4Mbps controller`	This is a so called Pnp (Plug and Pray, ehem, Play) extension card. Linux supports the ISA PnP stuff since one of the 2.3.x versions. Earlier versions of Linux need sp special utilities to configure PnP card. E.g. the `isapnptools` package from the ISA PnP Tools Page.

`The Colorado Trakker parallel port drive`	Support for this drive was added by Jochen Hoenicke.
`Micro Solutions Backpack parallel port floppy tape drives`	At least the Iomega Ditto product line is supported. Some Exabyte parallel port tape drives -- which in principle also have an interface made by Micro Solutions -- are reported to have problems.