DDS4 Advice.
Basil Holloway
working condition on a Dell NT4 computer and set it up on a RS6000. Lscfg
acceptes it okay and says it is available.
Cleaning tape works okay.
Fed it a new tape and and after all three indicator lights go out start
mksysb and after 2 minutes a green read light and a orange disturbance light
comes on and smit falls over with several error messages from corrupt tapes
to faulty hardware.
The IBM DDS4 manual does not say what this indicator light combination
means.
#tapechk 3 works okay but #tapechk 5 #tapechk 9 and #tctl -f /dev/rmto erase
on several tapes fail. All tapes are DDS4 of IBM and Sony brand.
#diag shows the drive is a Python 06408-XXX but no firmware version is
displayed.
#lscfg -v -p -l rmto does not display any firmware version either.
Checked that id2 I used is available and I put a terminator on the
enclosure. By chance in my bits box had a Dell LVD/SE p/n 78PEP terminator.
Had the Dell Tape drive enclosure attatched to a 7044-170 with a Dell scsi
lead p/n J3431 Amphenol 4 metres long that has that special IBM SCSI-LVD
connector that fits the back of the 7044-170.
A few questions please.
Would a 4 metre long SCSI lead be okay.
Could I hit the DDS4 drive with IBM TAPE TOOL software and give it some
firmware.
Thanks
Basil
RickE
> Would a 4 metre long SCSI lead be okay.
Should be. If you're running the drive in SE (single-ended) mode, I
prefer to keep my SCSI cable lengths to a maximum of 3 meters, just
because I don't like to "push" the envelope.
> Could I hit the DDS4 drive with IBM TAPE TOOL software and give it some
> firmware.
You could try it, but since the drive does not have IBM VPD now, the
IBM code will probably refuse to download the RS/6000 firmware. If
you use a "generic" firmware downloader, you might be successful (you
might also turn it into a nice paperweight).
Rick Ekblaw
William R. Walsh
> Could I hit the DDS4 drive with IBM TAPE TOOL software and give
> it some firmware.
What version of AIX are you using? I'm no AIX expert, so I may be
completely wrong. I wonder if the AIX OS would have to know how to
handle a DDS4 tape?
I would not suggest tinkering with the drive's firmware. Again, so far
as I know, the special IBM firmware only comes into play when you try
to boot from tape.
William
William R. Walsh
Oh...also, what happens when you run a backup using the Dell hardware
and software? Does it work then?
There is a possibility that you might need to give the drive a manual
cleaning, especially if it has been heavily used. I had an HP DDS3
drive with heads that were dirtier than the cleaning tape could fix.
Some ***careful*** work with 99% isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol resulted
in a lot of built up gunk coming out of the head. The drive then
worked reliably. Note that it is extremely important to use an
appropriate cleaning method. You might wish to read the
sci.electronics.repair FAQ and its VCR cleaning instructions--what you
will find in a DDS drive is a miniaturized version of the same.
Michael W. Ryder
purchased a HP drive on-line for about $100. This one behaved much as
you describe but I got no further. I exchanged that drive for an IBM
branded one and it worked right out of the box. This was done on a 370,
like the one I sent you, using the external cable.
I don't know if this helps, but maybe the RS6000 doesn't like non-IBM
drives. I downloaded a pdf from IBM that collects a lot of the
information on tape drives together. Let me know if you want a copy of it.
Basil Holloway
Rick
Remembered I had a 12 inch version the cable on the Intellistation for the
external DVD-RAM drive. Tried this with the same result.
Tried the drive on a W2K machine amd it worked flawlessly, so will not try
the firmware update, already have a good supply of paperweights.
William
Have had DDS2, DDS3 and DDS4 all working well on AIX 3 to AIX 6 but they all
have been OEM'ed with IBM's name on them.
As it worked on the W2K machine, figured it did not need cleaning.
Don't have a Dell set up, but I saw it working on a Dell/NT4 set up.
Michael
Looks like I have hit the same snag as you did on the HP. IBM will not
tolerate outsiders.
Is that IBM article TAPE HELP PACKAGE ( tapewhdr.pdf ) 93 pages ?
If not would appreciate a copy.
Thanks
Basil
Uli Link
> Thanks guys for the replies.
> Rick
> Remembered I had a 12 inch version the cable on the Intellistation for the
> external DVD-RAM drive. Tried this with the same result.
> Tried the drive on a W2K machine amd it worked flawlessly, so will not try
> the firmware update, already have a good supply of paperweights.
>
> William
> Have had DDS2, DDS3 and DDS4 all working well on AIX 3 to AIX 6 but they all
> have been OEM'ed with IBM's name on them.
> As it worked on the W2K machine, figured it did not need cleaning.
> Don't have a Dell set up, but I saw it working on a Dell/NT4 set up.
>
I have booted and created a mksysb also on HP DDS3 drive, but I had to
alter the dip switch position on the drive bottom according to a paper
that came with the drive.
The boot image (the first file on the tape) is and must always be
written with a fixed block size of 512 bytes. The 4th file on tape is
then written with the native blocksize of the tape drive for better
performance. So AIX must be capable of changing the tape drive's
blocksize on the fly.
I didn't used tape drives for quite a few years now anymore. Much to
unreliable.
--
Uli Link