The DLT 40 is a large SCSI device, which takes a 50-pin scsi cable. The cable doesn't require terminators so long as the terminator jumper is set in a jumper row to starboard. The device comes with a default SCSI ID of 5 (ie no jumpers in the ID selection jumper row)
Once plugged in, the BIOS immediately picks up the SCSI card. I was using an Adaptec SCSI controller. This card acts as a scsi device itself and has an onboard SCSI BIOS, accessible with a ctrl+a key combination. The bios allows the SCSI ID's of the two devices (the adaptor and the drive) to be set. The adaptor took a default id of 7, so there was no clash. The bios was also able to detect the drive as a Quantum DLT4000.
So with the hardware set up, and the SCSI BIOS accepting the DRIVE, the hard bit was over. All that needed doing was a kernel compile to ensure that SCSI support and the AIC7xxx and 7000 support was compiled in.
We used the 2.4.20 kernel (downloaded with #ftp ftp.uk.kernel.org)
extracted with # tar xfy linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2
and linked with #cd /usr/src/; ln -s 2.4.20 linux
the old .config was moved into place and after make menuconfig (in /usr/src/linux)
the kernel was built with # make dep clean bzlilo modules modules_install
note that bzlilo will do all the lilo stuff for you :)
With the kernel working and the hardware built, we were able to see the SCSI controller in the hardware profile sniffed off the PCI bus. (see below)
A tape was inserted and the following command initiated the first backup: #tar cv /export/share >/dev/st0
root@lon-fs-1:/usr/src/linux# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C691 [Apollo PRO] (rev 44)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C598 [Apollo MVP3 AGP]
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C596 ISA [Apollo PRO] (rev 23)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586 IDE [Apollo] (rev 10)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586B USB (rev 11)
00:07.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3050 (rev 30)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX [Fast Etherlink] (rev 74)
00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Accton Technology Corporation SMC2-1211TX (rev 10)
00:0e.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec 7892A (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage IIC AGP (rev 7a)