HP 2/20 Surestore Plunge Solenoid?

[Tony Angerame]

I have a Surestore 2/20 (Sun L20) Tape Library with DLT8000 that's giving me fits. About once every two weeks I get a Hard Stop and need to recalibrate. Sorry for not having the exact text but the message is: "Plunge Solenoid failed to detect home" or something close to that. A recalibrate clears the error and away we go for another couple of weeks. Anyone seen this before? I've looked at both plunge solenoids and the seem to work fine ut I must say the drawer mechanisms and stops seem a bit flimsy.

TIA Tony

[CA713937 · Accepted solution]

I assume this is on solaris, and you can't run HP Library & Tape Tools.

Do you have a remote management card?

If so, can you generate a report page and attach the html report?

What version of controller firmware are you running?

[Tony Angerame]

David,

Thank you for the reply. Have not implemented RMC on the network yet so I cannot answer any of your questions. I intend to do so next few days and I'll gather the info and perhaps we can go from there.

Thanks again,

Tony

[CA713937]

The latest controller firmware should be 1.55.S for your particular product.

[CA713937]

BTW, we don't have an error called "Plunge Solenoid failed to detect home".

Getting us an RMC report page, or L&TT support ticket (if you can connect it to a windows host) would allow us to troubleshoot it better.

You might also want to run 100 passes of the full sweep test (to make sure the picker brushes are clean).

[Tony Angerame]

Thanks David. I going to implement the RMC and, if neccessary upgrade FW on Monday. My gut feeling is that this may very well be a picker brush problem because of it's intermittent nature. The error did contain "Plunge Solenoid" but I obviously don't have it exactly right.

Tony

[CA713937]

FYI, you'll need to update to 1.55.S before you get the "full sweep" test (that's the first Sun release where that test existed).

[CA713937]

Let us know if your problems are resolved.

[Tony Angerame]

David,

I upgraded the FW of the L20 to 1.55S with the Full Sweep Test. Runing the full sweep did extend the time between failures but only by a few days. I visually inspected the picker brushes and the "Track" they ride in. I found the to be quite dirty with a black substance and some oxidation. I cleaned them with isoprpyl and followed with a very light appplication of "Deoxit" electrical contact cleaner. Prior to cleaning the brushes the library was totally inoperative. Here is the error before cleaning the brushes:

"transport stuck at home position. The transport lost power (66,89)."

Prior to this failure other failures were:

"Error code not set a command sent to the transport timed out (0,86) (Repated 7 times)"

"Failed to move after finding plunge home position. A command sent to the transport times out (68,86)."

Also after cleaning the brushes I noticed that the Power on Self Test and the recalibrate routine complete faster. The full sweep test had zero retries when it had two or three before.

[CA713937]

Tony,

Glad you have you unit up and running again.

You picker sounds like an extreme case of track oxidation. We updated the HP firmware (1.52 and up) to include a maintenance track sweep process that runs once a day. This keeps the oxide from forming on the tracks if the library only has light use.

However, the Sun firmware (1.55.S) does not have the maintenance sweeps, so I'd suggest you run a few hundred full sweeps (via the test) once a month, just to keep oxide off the tracks (if your use is light).