UNIX RCD-1000, RCD-5020, RCD-5040, RCD-4x12 Installation/Configuration/Drivers

1. Do you have drivers or a utility for the REO-650, PMO-650, Sierra, Vertex or Apex drives in a UNIX environment?
   No drivers or utilities are needed. The drives are removable direct access devices and are treated like any other removable hard drive. You can use all of the built in UNIX commands to prepare and access the drive. Certain UNIX operating systems need disk geometry information. The geometry for each type of media is documented in the UNIX Installation notes.

2. Can I use both 512 byte/sector and 1024 byte/sector media?
   No. Only HPUX and Next operating systems support both. All others, SunOS, Solaris and Irix, only support 512 byte/sector media.

3. I am running Irix 5.3 and when I try to create a file system using newfs, the system crashes?
   This is most likely caused by the mediad daemon. The mediad daemon does not correctly support optical drives and interferes with the operation of them. You need to configure mediad so it does not monitor the device associated with the optical drive. Refer to the UNIX installation notes.

4. Why is the available capacity less than what the disk should be?
   All 5.25² optical media is double sided. This means a 4.2GB disk will only provide approximately 2.1GB on line at a time. The available space is then reduced slightly by operating system overhead, so you end up with about 1.9GB. You must flip the disk over to access the rest of the capacity.
   
   If the capacity you are seeing is significantly less than it should be, check to make sure the partition table is configured to use the entire disk. For example, in Irix 5.3-6.1, a 2.3GB disk when configured automatically by fx is done incorrectly and the partition is very small. You must use dvhtool as detailed in the UNIX Installation notes.

5. Do you have drivers / utility for the optical jukeboxes in the UNIX environment?
   We do not have a product of our own, but we recommend a third party software by Tracer Technologies. Please contact out Sales department at 800-553-7070 for more information. You may also contact Tracer directly at www.tracertech.com.

6. What is the latest version of PVFS?
   Version 3.2 for Solaris (only up to 2.4, 2.5 is not supported) Version 2.4.3 for SunOS Version 4.0 for Irix 5.x

7. How come the RCD-1000, RCD-5020, and RCD 5040 drives can not be used like a normal CD ROM reader?
   These drives are type 4 CD Writers and are not recognized by the operating system as normal CDROM drives. They are CD Writers. You must use third party software in order to read or write to these drives. We recommend GEAR by Elektroson. You can contact our sales department at 800-553-7070 or Elektroson directly at www.elektroson.com.