HP Autoloader 718 strange behavior

[Joseph Salzer_3]

Hi all,

I have two HP 718 Autoloaders (DLT7000 SE). One autoloader has a bad drive and the other one works fine. Here is the issue I am having. When the server is booting up and the SCSI HBA probes for devices, it find the DLT7000 Drive at SCSI ID 1, and the robot at SCSI ID 0. The description for the drive is correct, the HBA detects as finding a "Quantum DLT 7000", however, the description for the robot is all messed up. For example it shows up as something like "ID 0 $&*@(%@" those aren't the actual characters, the actual characters are all weird ASCII Symbols. Both libraries do the same thing.

Windows 2003, detects the tape drive as a DLT7000 and the robot as an "Unknown Medium Changer" I know that Windows detecting the robot as unknown is no big deal as long as the backup application recognizes it. However, in this case the backup application doesn't not recognize the robot, but it does recognize the drive.

I've installed HP Tape Tools, and same result, it finds the drive and it also finds the medium changer, but it doesn't know what it is. When I click on the robot under L&TT it says "L&TT does not support this device. This tool currently only supports tape drives, tape libraries and autoloaders....." I've double checked the documentation for L&TT and the 718 IS a supported device.

L&TT detects the robot, but it can't detect the vendor. This is what it finds:

Manufacturer:
Product ID:
Description: Media_Changer
Firmware Revision: 2.07
SCSI port number: 2/0
SCSI Target ID: 0
SCSI LUN: 0
Driver:

Again, both autoloaders do the same thing.

Here is some added info:

Loader FW: 2.07
Drive FW: (2560) 96
Mech FW: 23

May be I need to update the firmware? If so, how do I do it without L&TT? I remember on some older models you had to put the firmware on a tape to update from. I think it may be the case for this model.

Thanks for the help and any feedback is appreciated.

JS

[Curtis Ballard]

The non-volatile memory on the library controller has discharged and the library lost the identity information that was programmed in manufacturing.

There is a hard coded identity string which can be enabled by using the front panel to go the "ADMIN *" then "CONFIG *" and select "INQ TOGGLE" then set that to ON.

It might be a good idea to first select "RESET DEFAULTS", power cycle, and then set the inquiry toggle just in case something else got corrupted when the memory was lost. For example an incorrect drive count can really confuse the firmware when it tries to configure 255 drives if the value is 0xFF instead of 0x01.

For your library the hardcoded inquiry data will match what was programmed in manufacturing.

If you download new firmware that setting will revert to using the values from memory and have to change the INQ TOGGLE setting again but there never will be any more new firmware for that library.