DLT 80 Drive Fails After Being Used Successfully for Approx. 1 Month

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Please generate support tickets for some failing drives and attach to your next reply zipped
Eugeny

[zak1974]

We have errors A402 on COMPAQ DLT8000 internal drive and the tape gets stuck inside (not rewinding). I did the firmware upgrade to the latest and it did not help. From what I see with the cover off - the bob that takes in the tape ribbon from the cartridge just cannot stop soon enough when the tape was forwarding, then it makes some slack of the ribbon, andthe drive starts blinking all LEDs on the right. Press the EJECT button - more ribbon are rolled onto the bob, then when it tries to stop - some slack again - LEDs on right are blinking - repeat to taste.

[Peter Godron]

zak,
can you please open a new thread for this?
Can provide pointers to your problem!
Thanks

[Jeffrey Willemsen]

to zak:

A402 sounds like mechanical problems with the drive, as you describe it it looks like the supply reel motor is malfunctioning.

Regards,
Jeffrey

[useddlt.com]

You need to know, all DLT 8000 drives are built from Quantum, even all HP and Compaq ones. As we found out, the DLT 8000 was the absolutely maximum boost up of that DLT technology. (followed up by S-DLT).
That means, the motors grow hot on non streaming mode and the heads are very sensitive for dirt, for all kind of dirt.

So these DLT 8000 drives are "a little bit of pregnant", even as new ones. We did remove all shields, blocking the airflow and we did exchange a lot of motors, all the front ones.
Have a look at this web "www.useddlt.com". May be use the google translator, its all German, but thousands of pictures for explanation are there and a lot of help too.