tlug: /dev/ftape and grandchildren

[Tony Laszlo <laszlo@example.com>]

I am trying to figure out how to make a Colorado Trakker 
250 (parallel port tape drive) work with Linux. Many moons 
ago, Stephen Turnbull posted these magic words for tarring 
to such a device:

 tar --create --verbose --use-compress-program=gzip --file=/dev/ftape
/(sourcedirectory)/

this gave the following error: 

tar (grandchild): Cannot open archive /dev/ftape: Device not configured
tar (grandchild): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
Broken pipe

my kernel is configured with parport.o and ftape.o loadable 
modules. after insmod-ing parport and ftape, lsmod gives: 

Module                  Size  Used by
zftape                 41932  -1 
ftape                  87512   0  [zftape]
parport                 7284   0  (unused

And ls -l /dev/ftape 
gives: 

/dev/ftape -> rft0


...I checked, and yes, the tape drive is plugged in :) 
I was hoping to get it working without installing 
ftaper, but will download and do that next. Am I 
making some silly mistake? 

Thanks. 

Tony Laszlo
Jiyugaoka, Tokyo




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