Dave Olson <olson@sgi.com> says: First, the 8200 (2.3 Gb).  The
  original version we qualified was 100% stock from Exabyte.  It had
  some problems on the ESD machines at power on, because of the
  somewhat non-standard way it handled the send-diag SCSI command.  The
  current rev (252T) we ship is also standard firmware from Exabyte (to
  the best of my knowledge), and fixes that problem, and is also more
  robust in the face of servo problems.

  The 8500 (5 Gb) isn't fully qualified (by SGI) yet, and there is some
  argument over whether we will ask for custom firmware; I think we are
  definitely slanting towards standard firmware.  The gotcha here is
  that Exabyte has released so many firmware revs for the 8500, that
  the word 'standard' is somewhat of a joke.  I've lost touch with that
  effort a bit, so I don't know what firmware rev we are currently
  working with.

  4.0.1 is the first IRIX release with support for the 8500, earlier
  releases will work to varying degrees with different 8500 firmware.