DLT 818 Tape Will Not Eject?

[David_611]

I have a surestore DLT 818 with a 6 cartridge magazine. My problem is that I have a tape stuck in the drive! I've tried everything to get it out. The front panel "release door" process fails and the tape cannot be removed manually even when the power is turned off. Is there some way to manually eject this tape!?!?

Thanks!

[David_611]

I should also mention that the front panel status says "No Drive"

[William W. Torrey]

Hello,

There is a document that covers this...

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg70405.html

[Curtis Ballard]

The document that Mr. Torrey posted is a good starting point.

If you can, update the library firmware to 2.12 which has several retries for drive unload problems that were not in earlier releases.

You mention that the front panel reports "NO DRIVE". This almost always means a drive hard failure and will require a service call. It means that the drive is not responding to serial communciation commands. Usually it won't respond to SCSI commands either when this occurs. There is one corner case that can occur with 2.07 and 2.10 firmware when the drive has a momentary failure and is able to recover after a reset that is fixed in 2.12 so if the drive is functional at all it will work with 2.12.

You can download the Library and Tape Tools utility for HP-UX or Windows from the support web page. This tool will allow you to download firmware and will pull error information from the drive an library. Here is a link to that tool:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?prodNum=C6282NB&prodName=hp+surestore+818+dlt+autoloader&locale=en_US&taskName=download+drivers+%26+software&taskId=8418&prodSeriesId=63827&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesName=hp+surestore+818+dlt+autoloaders

[David_611]

Thanks for the responses! I did perform all the updates / tests recommended here and I also spoke with a tech via phone. "No Drive" message persisted and HP is sending out a new unit.

Thanks!!