My problem with the TLZ07 tape drive hasn't been clearly answered. I
recieved several suggestions:
1) Clean the Tape drive. I'm sure I should be doing this more often,
but this didn't solve the problem.
2) Ask DEC to escalate the problem to engineering (we already had a hardware
support call in.) I have asked them to escalate the problem, but
I don't think anything ever came of it.
3) Change the console variable 'pka0_term_power' from 'on' to 'off'. It
tried this - didn't affect the tape drive, but probably exposed a
problem in our system with termination (using the wrong type of terminator)
4) The Digital Unix 3.X version had a problem with the tape drive being
unusable after hitting Ctrl-C at a critical time. Maybe it just has
never been fixed.
I can reliably reproduce this problem by using the tar command:
tar -tvf /dev/rmt0l
and hitting Ctrl-C as soon as the tape drive starts with some activity.
***
*** The DEC Hardware Technician did discover that we had a PASSIVE
*** terminator on the 1000A bus. The 1000A's internal qlogic SCSI
*** controller requires an ACTIVE terminator to be used at both ends of the
*** bus with the 1000A.
***
I haven't tried to hang the tape drive again after replacing the
terminator. We have had a lot of downtime lately.
***
*** Another thing we discovered is that you cannot upgrade the console
*** firmware on an ASE member if the external bus is connected to one of
*** the KZPSA's in the system
***
-Eric.
My previous message:
Eric Z. Ayers writes:
>
> We've been suffering from a problem with our 1000A and TLZ07 tape
> drive running Digital Unix 4.0B. It seems that if you press ^C at the
> right time, or eject a tape with the button instead of using a command
> like 'mt rewoffl', the tape drive will become unusable until you reboot
> the computer.
>
> This problem was first noticed under Digital Unix 3.2d. We didn't use
> the tape drive that often, and were just careful never to press
> control-C or the little button on the tape drive and it didn't bother us
> that often. Recently, I've been making a lot of tapes and encountered
> this problem a little too frequently. I logged a support call w/
> Digital. The hardware technician just replaced the TLZ07-AA with a
> TLZ07-BA. The same problem is still with us.
>
> We have checked terination on the bus and all is well. We have 5
> devices on this bus:
>
> ST1510N (Seagate Barracuda) id 0
> ST1510N (Seagate Barracuda) id 1
> RZ28 id 2
>
> RRD45
>
>
> ********************************* ENTRY 7. *********************************
>
> ----- EVENT INFORMATION -----
>
> EVENT CLASS ERROR EVENT
> OS EVENT TYPE 199. CAM SCSI
> SEQUENCE NUMBER 44.
> OPERATING SYSTEM DEC OSF/1
> OCCURRED/LOGGED ON Fri Apr 25 14:46:34 1997
> OCCURRED ON SYSTEM dux1
> SYSTEM ID x0006001B
> SYSTYPE x00000000
>
> ----- UNIT INFORMATION -----
>
> CLASS x0022 DEC SIM
> SUBSYSTEM x0000 DISK
> BUS # x0000
> x0028 LUN x0
> TARGET x5
>
> ----- CAM STRING -----
>
> ROUTINE NAME ss_abort_done
>
> ----- CAM STRING -----
>
> SCSI abort has been performed
>
> ********************************* ENTRY 8. *********************************
>
> ----- EVENT INFORMATION -----
>
> EVENT CLASS ERROR EVENT
> OS EVENT TYPE 199. CAM SCSI
> SEQUENCE NUMBER 43.
> OPERATING SYSTEM DEC OSF/1
> OCCURRED/LOGGED ON Fri Apr 25 14:46:34 1997
> OCCURRED ON SYSTEM dux1
> SYSTEM ID x0006001B
> SYSTYPE x00000000
>
> ----- UNIT INFORMATION -----
>
> CLASS x0000 DISK
> SUBSYSTEM x0000 DISK
> BUS # x0000
> x0028 LUN x0
> TARGET x5
>
> ----- CAM STRING -----
>
> ROUTINE NAME isp_termio_abort_bdr
>
> ----- CAM STRING -----
>
> Specified IO transaction aborted
>
> ----- UNSUPPORTED ENTRY -----
>
> CAM ENTRY x0000040E SIM_WS
>
> ********************************* ENTRY 9. *********************************
>
> ----- EVENT INFORMATION -----
>
> EVENT CLASS ERROR EVENT
> OS EVENT TYPE 199. CAM SCSI
> SEQUENCE NUMBER 42.
> OPERATING SYSTEM DEC OSF/1
> OCCURRED/LOGGED ON Fri Apr 25 14:46:34 1997
> OCCURRED ON SYSTEM dux1
> SYSTEM ID x0006001B
> SYSTYPE x00000000
>
> ----- UNIT INFORMATION -----
>
> CLASS x0022 DEC SIM
> SUBSYSTEM x0000 DISK
> BUS # x0000
> x0028 LUN x0
> TARGET x5
>
> ----- CAM STRING -----
>
> ROUTINE NAME ss_perform_timeout
>
> ----- CAM STRING -----
>
> timeout on disconnected request
>
> ----- UNSUPPORTED ENTRY -----
>
> CAM ENTRY x0000040E SIM_WS
>
>
>
> ... ( a few more of the same reported over again ) ...
Received on Fri May 02 1997 - 18:35:38 NZST