User Guide

Ampex 1308911-02 1-1
General Information Introduction
Section 1
General Information
1.1 Introduction
Ampex DST/DIS tape drives write data to and read data from a DST cartridge — a
high-capacity magnetic tape media incorporating the DD-2 (Data Digital-2) tape standard.
This document describes how to use the Ampex DST/DIS tape drive software installed on your
UNIX host system. The software includes Version 6.0 of the Tape Management Utilities and
a libdd2 Application Programming Interface (API).
The Tape Management Utilities are a set of programs that provide command-line access to an
Ampex DST or DIS tape drive. They are compatible with the DST/DIS Automated Cartridge
(ACL) Utilities as well as standard UNIX tape drive utilities (such as tar , dd , buffer , and so
forth). All Ampex DST/DIS utilities are designed for use in scripts that perform higher-level
operations, so they use a consistent set of input and output conventions that make them easy
to integrate.
The libdd2 API is a set of C-library functions that simplify control of Ampex DST/DIS tape
drives. The API presents a consistent, platform-independent abstract layer that provides access
to the tpsc tape device driver used on Silicon Graphics IRIX platforms, or to the Ampex
DST/DIS tape device driver used on the following supported platforms:
•
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital UNIX (formerly DEC OS/F 1)
•
Hewlett Packard HP-UX
•
IBM AIX
•
Sun Microsystems Solaris
The DST/DIS or tpsc tape device driver must already be installed before using any of the
interfaces presented in this document. See the related documents listed in paragraph 1.5 for
the location of information on the installation and operation of DST hardware and software.