    AST RESEARCH, INC.           TECHNICAL BULLETIN # 1311           9-21-95

                            Vines and HP/Exabyte Tape Drives

    PROBLEM:    When attempting to perform a Banyan Vines backup to an older
                HP or Exabyte tape drive (Exabyte 8200, 8200XL, for example),
                you may encounter errors indicating SCSI BUS timeouts or resets.
                These errors may occur when the tape drive is attached to a
                Fast-SCSI controller such as the integrated NCR, DAC 960, or
                DPT controller cards.  This condition can occur on any i486 or
                Pentium-based product and is not specific to AST products.

    SOLUTION:   Attach the tape drive to a standard SCSI controller card
                (Banyan recommends the Adaptec 1540).

    SYSTEMS
    AFFECTED:   Any AST System that is being used as a Banyan Vines server and
                that incorporates a "Fast SCSI" disk controller.