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XTAPE and ISITAPE are no longer marketed or distributed by Interprocess.
IBM now includes XTAPE and AWS34XX.SYS (replacement for ISITAPE)
as part of the P/390 Licensed Internal Code. |
![[diagram]](diagram.gif)
XTAPE SCSI Tape UtilityXTAPE is an OS/2 application program designed especially for P/390 environments. It provides OS/2 backup and restore functions along with other tape utility functions.XTAPE is the only OS/2 backup product that shares tape drives with the P/390 environment. It is not necessary to shut down the P/390 and re-boot OS/2 with a modified CONFIG.SYS in order to transfer control of a tape drive between OS/2 and the P/390. The tape drive sharing capability afforded by XTAPE comes from its use of ISITAPE device driver (Version 2). XTAPE provides full OS/2 file backup and restore functions. The XTAPE DUMP and LOAD commands process OS/2 FAT and HPFS files with complete Extended Attribute information. XTAPE is suitable for performing backups and stand-alone restores of an OS/2 system, including OS/2 WARP 4.0 Server Advanced. XTAPE has options for including or excluding OS/2 system files and hidden files as needed. You can also direct XTAPE to back up only "archive" files -- files which have been modified since the last DUMP and have the "A" attribute on; the Archive attributes will be turned off by XTAPE. XTAPE performs extensive integrity checking. A DUMP with the Verification option will read through a completed output tape and compare the tape copy of each file with the original disk file. XTAPE also stores the block count and byte count for each OS/2 file during a DUMP. When you LOAD or SCAN the tape, XTAPE checks the amount of data being read from the tape against the expected counts. XTAPE processes multi-volume backups and restores. Additional tape volumes are automatically requested and timestamped to ensure that the proper tape sequence is accessed on subsequent LOAD and SCAN processing. Besides the DUMP/LOAD/SCAN functions, XTAPE offers other VMFPLC2-like operations --
XTAPE runs from an OS/2 window and uses a non-GUI, command line oriented interface. XTAPE can be executed:
XTAPE comes with a job event scheduler called "XtapeJES" for automatically launching backups at predetermined times at daily, weekly, or monthly intervals. What about performance?
XTAPE uses multiple OS/2 threads
and multiple buffers to maximize throughput, making it at least twice as
fast as other available OS/2 backup products.
For XTAPE timing test results, see these Performance Graphs: |
ISITAPE Device DriverISITAPE is an OS/2 SCSI tape device driver program which provides access to SCSI tape drives from IBM PC Server S/390 ("P/390") systems, making them appear to MVS, VM, or VSE as channel-attached devices. ISITAPE interfaces with the P/390 channel program to accept CCW tape commands and converts them to SCSI tape commands. SCSI sense information is returned to the P/390 as appropriate IBM (3420, 3422, 3480, or 3490) status and sense bytes. The ISITAPE device driver can also be accessed from other cooperating OS/2, non-P/390 applications such as XTAPE. ISITAPE is a superset of the SCSI3420 and SCSI3480 device drivers which were written by Interprocess and sublicensed by IBM. ISITAPE can be used in place of SCSI3420 for 3420 and 3422 support, or in place of SCSI3480 to control 3480, 3490, and 3490E devices. ISITAPE permits tape drive sharing:ISITAPE Version 2 allows control of tape devices to be transferred between the P/390 and OS/2 environments without modifying CONFIG.SYS and rebooting OS/2.To release control of a tape drive, the P/390 host operating system
does not need to be shut down. Standard operator commands will
gain and release exclusive control of a drive: While the P/390 environment has a drive assigned, XTAPE is prevented by the ISITAPE device driver from using that drive. While XTAPE is using a drive, all attempted P/390 accesses of that particular drive receive a "unit assigned elsewhere" error. ISITAPE enables 18/36-track write mode to be controlled from the host operating system:Beginning with ISITAPE Version 2.04, a dual 18/36-track SCSI tape drive can be defined in the P/390 configurator with two different device addresses (one for device type 3480, the other for device type 3490). This allows the write density (18-track or 36-track) on dual track capable drives like the Fujitsu M2488E to be conveniently controlled by the tape unit address coded in the JCL rather than requiring manual density selection via the drive's front panel.Tape drives supported by ISITAPE:ISITAPE supports all of the 4mm, 8mm, 9-track, 18-track, and 36-track tape drives which are supported by the SCSI34x0 device drivers. In addition, ISITAPE provides support for the following tape drive models:
Need extra copies of ISITAPE?The ISITAPE product package includes four additional copies of the device driver program (ISITAP0, ISITAP1, ISITAP2, and ISITAP3) -- enough to control five SCSI tape drives on the same system -- one device driver program per tape drive.Want to know which tape drive is at which address???The "ISISTAT" utility provides a quick overview of all the tape drives that are controlled by the ISITAPx drivers. It tells each tape drive's manufacturer, model, and microcode level -- plus the SCSI ID, device address, device type, and whether it's currently in use by XTAPE or the P/390. ISISTAT and the "ISIDDVAL" Device Driver Validation utility are included with the ISITAPE software. |
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