Hey guys, my first post here but I have been a Slackfiend for a while.
As you can guess from the title my question is related to the viability of using LTO tape backup on my Slamd64 based server.

So let me begin with the specifications I have currently for my motherboard.

I have an old ASUS K8V SE,

The PCI spec is 2.2
And the Southbridge chipset is a VIA VT8237

So I was wondering how easy is it setup an LTO 2/3 internal or external tape drive and corresponding PCI or PCI-X SCSI card ? I was looking at the specs of the VIA VT8237 but couldn't find any concrete information on how it would handle PCI-X, though for the VT8237R Plus chipset they list this feature, "Dual PCI-X bus support through VIA VPX2 I/O expansion bridge"

Anyways I just want to see what you guys on here thought, Ideally some info on the low level software backend and the high level user input frontend software would be useful too

It is my first step into Tape drives.

Easiest thing to do is open the case and see if you have any PCI-X slots. If you do any PCI-x card should work fine.

This machine only has PCI 2.2 slots and I know PCI-X cards are backward compatible with this as long as they accept 5V which most do. The data-speed bottleneck is no issue as even LTO3 only offers 80MB/s and normal PCI 2.2 can deliver that.

I'd just really like know if anyones had any success on Slackware with this and what issues or pitfalls have they come across.