mhurley Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 we're a printing company and regularly have to pull customers' old files from our DAT tape archive. This entails a search and restore. The problem is, when you tell Retrospect to restore the selected files, it sees the tape, begins the restore, and then nothing happens. It sits there for hours if you let it on the Restoring Files window with 0 files restored. It doesn't lock up but when you tell it to cancel it does the same thing. It sits there saying Cancelling but never actually gets there. I have to force quit Retrospect to get out of it. I have a Sony SDT-9000 SCSI DAT tape drive (listed as a qualified device by EMC) connected to a RATOC Systems PCI30U Ultra SCSI PCI adapter in a Mirrored-Drive-Door G4 PowerMac running OS X 10.4.11 and Retrospect 6.1 with the most recent driver updates. The RATOC card is new (and to some extent, so is the computer). We had been running an Adaptec 9360U card in a Blue and White G3 as our Retrospect machine. It died, so we upgraded to a newer one of our machines, the MDD. The Adaptec card never worked properly in the newer machine (many others have had the same problems), so we purchased the RATOC card and installed it. It installed fine, and the drivers were installed as well. The system registers that both the adapter and the drive are installed, and so does Retrospect. When you insert a tape, Retrospect registers the insertion, reads the tape's name, and lists it in the devices window. It also registers eject commands and so on. The only thing that seems not to work is the actual restore function. The busy light on the DAT drive also doesn't come on when files are being pulled from the tape (it used to under the old system). I haven't yet tried copying files to a tape. While we do have the files saved to mountable CD/DVDs that do not require Retrospect to access, finding files on those is much slower than via the DAT archive. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions about this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 The only Retrospect supported SCSI Card type on the Macintosh is the ATTO brand. I have never even heard of RATOC cards. For sure they have never been tested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 RATOC are shown in the Retrospect device compatibility lists as making at least one qualified device, although it's a FireWire CD-RW drive, and they claim their FireWire-to-UltraSCSI adapter is "Certified for Retrospect 5 or later" on MacOS. The controller chip on the card is branded as Initio. Guess I assumed their card would work since others of their line are listed as working. I couldn't find any compatibility info for SCSI cards at all in the device compatibility listings, so I didn't know there were specific cards that were supported and others that were not. Wish I'd known that before we bought the new card. Guess we got burned. Thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 15, 2008 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 (edited) I see they do say this, but I don't think it has ever been certified by EMC Insignia's QA team. I am researching this right now. SCSI has changed a lot since the early days of OS X. It may have worked under 10.2 but I would be shocked if it worked with tape under 10.4 and 10.5 considering Retrospect fails with all native scsi cards except for ATTO. http://kb.dantz.com/article.asp?article=5642&p=2 They also list "You need optional AC adapter (FR-AC05)" for the Sony drive. Do you have this? You can see from the document above that Initio support is only up to 10.2.8 Edited July 15, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 Ah. Thank you. Now that I know what article I'm looking for, I can find it. Incidentally, if you do a Knowledge Base search for the terms "Mac SCSI Adapter" that article is number 133 of a list of 200, sorted by relevancy. It has a listed relevancy of almost nothing. I don't suppose there's any way to alter the relevancy of the articles, is there? I would think that particular article should be pretty relevant to that search. Or maybe add that information to the main device compatibility listing? Just so someone else doesn't go through what we've just gone through. Thankfully, we can return the RATOC card, less shipping and restocking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 Oh. Forgot about the AC adapter question. That's for the SCSI-to-FireWire adapter, not the SCSI card. We got a SCSI card, not the adapter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 OK, so before I order another adapter card, I want to run it by you guys to make sure it's acceptable. How about the ATTO 0042-PCBX-002 ExpressPCI? It's ATTO and used to be a Apple-provided card for G3 and G4 computers. Will that work? Any problems ya'll know about? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Typically users have the ATTO UL3, UL4 or UL5 cards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 OK, so before I order another adapter card, I want to run it by you guys to make sure it's acceptable. How about the ATTO 0042-PCBX-002 ExpressPCI? It's ATTO and used to be a Apple-provided card for G3 and G4 computers. Will that work? Any problems ya'll know about? Michael, I'm just a Retrospect user like you are, but I can give you our experience and report on the experience of some other users. We have an Xserve G5 (PCI-X bus) that was ordered with the build-to-order ("BTO") Apple-branded dual-channel SCSI card (which Apple still sells). Turns out, the Apple-branded SCSI card is a rebranded LSI Logic 22320, and it never worked right in our Xserve G5 with Retrospect. I investigated, and all of the backup software vendors (e.g., Tolis Group, etc., not just EMC) recommended the ATTO card, as did people on the MacOS X Server email list, and, off-the-record, as an Apple engineer did. So we got an ATTO UL4D (the PCI-X version of their card), and all problems disappeared. ATTO support is excellent, too. The Apple Dual-channel SCSI card sits on a shelf in a cabinet, gathering dust. Good riddance. Most people with an Intel Xserve get the ATTO UL5D or, more commonly, the UL5D Low Profile, because both are for the PCIe bus, and have higher throughput. Some people have reported issues with Mac OS 10.5.x and the current UL5D driver (not just with Retrospect, but in general), and ATTO is apparently trying to resolve this. The UL3D or UL3S might work in your computer, you could investigate the bus configuration specs on ATTO's page. ATTO doesn't seem to be upgrading the driver for the UL3D recently, so I don't know how compatible it is with 10.4.x and 10.5.x, and I don't believe that the UL3D / UL3S is being sold any longer (except you might find them on eBay, or old stock, etc.). Hope this helps, Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 16, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Those cards are all PCIe cards. I have 64 bit, 33 MHz PCI slots. As far as I know, a PCIe card will not work in a PCI slot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 (edited) Those cards are all PCIe cards. I have 64 bit, 33 MHz PCI slots. As far as I know, a PCIe card will not work in a PCI slot. Sorry, Michael, you are wrong. The UL5D and UL5D Low Profile are the only ones that are PCIe. UL4D and UL4S are PCI-X. I know because I've got an Xserve G5 with a UL4D. UL3D and UL3S are 33/66 PCI (64 bit). See the attached ATTO brochure page from 2005, back when the UL3D was being sold. A still older card, the ATTO PSC, was 32 bit PCI. Again, see the attached brochure page. I'd suggest the UL4D or UL4S for you, which is backward compatible for PCI. Or, if you want and can find a UL3D, go with that, but I wouldn't. The issue with the UL3D might be driver support because the UL3D is discontinued. Russ Edited July 16, 2008 by Guest UL3D and PSC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 16, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Thanks for the info, but unfortunately those cards are mostly overkill for my situation. We're a small company eking along using older hardware whenever we can. I replaced our 9 year old Retrospect machine with a 5 year old machine from another office. We can't afford to buy a new computer (especially not something like a Mac Pro) just so we can plug a PCIe SCSI card into it. Beyond that, it would be a bit silly to go that route just to talk to a 15 year old SCSI2 tape drive. It can't be that hard to get this to work. Do I need to just wipe the whole thing and go back to OS 9 and Retrospect 4.3? I've still got the install disks for it. At least then I'd be able to write to my catalogs again and I could just use the Adaptec card we started with. It's just so frustrating. I haven't been able to do a backup in two months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 16, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Ah, thanks for that PDF, that's the first thing I've seen that tells me whether any of those cards are 32 bit PCI compatible. I hadn't seen anything on ATTO's website. I think the PSC is the card I'm looking at right now. And that PDF also tells me it's OS X compatible. And 2005 is when 10.4 was released, so it might just work. Thanks, that helps a lot. And I see you are right about the PCIe. My fault. I must have misread the ATTO website. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 (edited) (1) again, why are you talking about buying a new computer and a PCIe card? The UL4D, UL4S, UL3D, UL3S are NOT PCIe. I can't figure you out on this. A UL4D or UL4S will do fine in your MDD G4 PowerMac computer because they work in PCI bus computers and they will not work in a PCIe slot because they are not PCIe. See the data sheet. (2) As for the cost, well, you make the decision as to what your data is worth. If your data is not worth the cost of a used UL4S/UL4D on eBay, well, I wouldn't bother backing up the data. It's not worth the effort if the data is worth less than about $300.00, which is what the used cards are selling for. (3) The Apple documentation for your computer indicates that your MDD G4 has 4 33 MHz 64 bit PCI slots. Apple Mirrored Drive Door G4 specs The UL4D / UL4S will work fine. Russ Edited July 16, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Ah, thanks for that PDF, that's the first thing I've seen that tells me whether any of those cards are 32 bit PCI compatible. I hadn't seen anything on ATTO's website. I think the PSC is the card I'm looking at right now. And that PDF also tells me it's OS X compatible. And 2005 is when 10.4 was released, so it might just work. Thanks, that helps a lot. And I see you are right about the PCIe. My fault. I must have misread the ATTO website. Michael, I would avoid the PSC because it does not have current drivers. MacOS 10.4 (and 10.4.4 and later) are different animals from what came before. The PSC has long been discontinued, and I doubt that there is a working driver for it that supports 10.4.11. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhurley Posted July 16, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 Michael, I would avoid the PSC because it does not have current drivers. MacOS 10.4 (and 10.4.4 and later) are different animals from what came before. The PSC has long been discontinued, and I doubt that there is a working driver for it that supports 10.4.11.Russ Yeah, I've just talked to ATTO's tech support and they said the PSC is compatible only up to 10.3.9. I'm trying to find a UL3S controller now, but they seem to be in the hen's teeth category now. Looks like we'll be getting the UL4S after all now that I'm no longer misunderstanding what machines it works in. Guess that's what I get for trying to save money. Thanks for the help on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 16, 2008 Report Share Posted July 16, 2008 This issue has a separate thread on Macintouch. http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/backup/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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