Thanks to all those people who replied about my problems with the TLZ04
tape drive, including:
Francesco Zerra <zerra_at_cmns.mnegri.it>
Martin Moore <jmm_at_am.appstate.edu>
Dr. Tom Blinn <tpb_at_zk3.dec.com>
Helen Daley <daleyh_at_newi.ac.uk>
John Stoffel <jfs_at_fluent.com>
Steve Thompson <smt_at_NICS1.CORNING.COM>
Olle Eriksson <olle_at_cb.uu.se>
Oscar Knight <odk_at_cs.appstate.edu>
Pam Woods <axsymgr_at_UAA.ALASKA.EDU>
Several people told me what the diagnostic lights were saying, which was
essentially 'power-on self test failed', which did not sound good.
However I got a couple of suggestions to power-cycle the drive whilst
holding the eject button down (and keeping it held down). Sure enough,
after about 2 mins it spat the tape out and all the lights returned to green.
A new tape in the drive and everything seems to be fine again. A number
of people pointed out that this drive isn't supposed to use 90M tapes,
only 60M, but I was aware of that - I was under the impression that it
made no difference, except that the last 1/3 of the tape was 'wasted' as the
drive couldn't see it. I may be wrong?
Obviously a drive this old is not wholly trustworthy, and in fact it is
only used to back up a couple of disks once a month or so and save me one
nights tape-changing on the big TLZ08's. However it's a really useful
drive to have as I can plug it into any workstation and have a local tape
to back up to, so I'm really glad it's working again!
Thanks for all your responses.
Chris
--
Dr Chris Stoddart * Neutrinos have mass?
Systems Manager, Dept. of Physics, * I didn't even know they were Catholic
The Open University, U.K. * http://physics.open.ac.uk/~cstoddar/
Received on Mon May 12 1997 - 16:52:48 NZST