Compaq TL891DLX DLT Autoloader

[Steve Shellard]

Hi,
We are trying to use a Compaq TL891DLX Minilibrary, to do DLT restores using Veritas' Netbackup Enterprise 5.1.
The problem we have is that the autoloader doesn't read the code 39 barcodes on the tapes consistently. Run an inventory on the autoloader, and it will pick up say 1-2 out of 5 tapes. Run it again, and it may pick up the same tapes, or more likely it will find another and not read the tapes it saw previously. The firmware v05.25 is the latest version (I believe). The only tape it finds consistently is a cleaning tape,which is also barcoded. It's not a problem with Netbackup, because when you interrogate the autoloader directly after chnaging the tapes around, and getting it to do an inventory, you can see that only 1-2 of the barcodes have been read. It knows that there are tapes in the other slots, but fails to read the barcode.

Any suggestions will be gratefully received

Thanks

[Claudio Ruzza_1 · Accepted solution]

I experienced such a problem whenever I saw TL89x libraries that were using bar code labels "home made" or damaged.
Are you using original bar code labels?
If you're using "home made" bar code labels, can you re-print them with the same label data?

If you're using original bar code labels and they does not appear to be of poor quality, you probably need to chek your TL89x bar code reader. Maybe e cleaning can fix your problem, most likely you need to call tech support to swap it.

HTH
Claudio Ruzza

[Steve Shellard]

The answer was to re-do the barcode labels. It looks like the barcode reader in the Autoloader is less tolerant of position ,and lack of whitespace round the barcode.

Claudio...many thanks for the help

[Steve Shellard]

The problem was caused by lack of 'whitespace' at the ends of the barcode label. When I made that as long as I could, given the constraints of space on a DLT tape cartridge, the barcodes read OK.