ISM question

Dear people, We had a problem configuring ISM to work with our Informix 7.3 on WinNT (SP3), actually , we couldn't find how to tell Informix which device to use. Eventually Informix support came up with the following string to indicate which tape streamer to use: In ISM, Add device : \\\\.\\tape0 When I take the properties of the installed tape device in "Control Panel > Tape Devices" , it tells me the device to be 'tape0' so that explains at least part of the string. But why is the '\\\\.\\' needed ? The reason I'd like to know is because we're going to switch to a different type of backup medium and want to know if I'm going to encounter the same problem (telling ISM which device to use). thanks for any input, Benny

>When I take the properties of the installed tape device in "Control Panel > >Tape Devices" , it tells me the device to be 'tape0' so that explains at >least part of the string. But why is the '\\\\.\\' needed ? The '.' means the tape unit is located on your machine. You could use a tape unit located somewhere else on the network and put the machine name instead of the '.' Bashar Chalabi CTL, London