Re: A possibly foolish technical question...

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

>>>>>True, I was assuming that you'd to be wanting access to a DOS floppy.  
>>>>Maybe, but not nessesarily. .... this seems to be
>>>>true of other things, like ZIP drives. I also think it's true of some tapes.
>>>Hummmm, I've made bootable tapes, I've even partitioned DAT tapes,
>>>but I've never seen anything that even mentioned mounting a tape.

>>>If you come across anything that talks about mounting tapes, please send 
>>>it (or the URL) my way.  I'd be interested in talking a look.  Thanks!
>>... I've seen device access issues and
>>building filesystems on tapes (instead of archives). For all I know, there's a
>>welter of other devices [how many devices in a "welter"? sorry :)] that are 
>>treated the same way... and the last time I looked, the number of devices 
>> wasn't getting any smaller!
>
>I've seen filesystems built on tape.  That's how bootable HPUX tapes
>are made, but the tapes still cannot be mounted.  When a system
>boots from tape, the tape filesystem is read into a ramdisk to run.
>
>I also remember reading in the newsgroups, at least in the HPUX
>world, that there is no way to mount a tape.  I also know that Linux
>can do a lot more "creative" things than HPUX, so maybe the feature
>exists in Linux somewhere.  If you come across it, let me know.
I came across it once, and I'm sure I'll come across it again... when I
do, you'll be the second one to know...[Perhaps the ftape HOWTO?]

But the main point of this was that there are other devices, and people are 
coming up with new ones, too. If the answers pretty much cover the possibilities
for device access, these are very useful bits of knowledge...

My THANKS to all who provided answers to this question, ALL of then will be 
useful...

                                                      Regards,
                                                        ---> RGB <---