an old DAT tape with a blinking yellow light

[curt larson_1]

I'm trying to use an old 1504 dds-1 Dat drive in an C200 in the internal bay. But once installed, it immediately spits out the tapes.

For those of you that might be interested in helping me get this working I'll describe what I've done.

when installing the drive itself, I noticed there was a slightly bent pin on the scsi connector that needed straightening.
There were two jumpers setting the scsi address to three.
when powered on the lights respond as follows:
left is green for 2 seconds
both blink yellow for 5 seconds
then remains with the left blinking yellow while the right is a steady yellow. It does this weather the se scsi terminator is attached to rear of the workstation.
the boot rom recognizes the tape drive as a boot device at address 3.
insf installs the stape devices during boot up.
ioscan reports in as an unknow device with a description of hp35480A

anyone have any suggestions to help me get this drive operational.

Thanks

[Iain F. Brown]

I suspect you may not be using dds1 tapes.
DDS-1 drives can only read and write DDS-1 tapes. The coating formulation of
DDS-2 and DDS-3 tapes differs significantly to enable them to record at a higher
data density. HP DAT drives are backward compatible; a DDS-2 or DDS-3 drive
automatically adjusts to the type of tape. This adjustment hardware is not present
in a DDS-1 drive. If you put a DDS-2 or DDS-3 tape in a DDS-1 drive,
it will be ejected immediately, and a DDS-2 drive will eject a DDS-3 tape.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Curt,
to allow OS to see drive you have to go to SAM, then kernel config, and include stape driver to the kernel. Then rebuild it and reboot. Then tape drive will become claimed.
Please use HP LTT to diagnoze drive http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50128.html . Probably it needs to be cleaned. Try cleaning 5 consecutive times
Eugeny

[curt larson_1]

Iain,
I thought that might be the case. I have tried different manufacturers, different lengths, and even a 60m DDS-1 tape. And they all stayed in for about the same 2 seconds.

eugeny,
yes, your right about that. the kernel will need to modified. I don't know why someone would config out the drivers for tapes and cds. Does it really run that much faster. Oh well just my opinion. back to the issue at hand.
I don't have a cleaning tape on hand at the moment, but this drive spits out the tapes i've tried so far and don't think a cleaning tape would stay in any longer then the others have.
And, along the same line, when at the boot rom menu prompt, the tape drive should accept a tape, ie kinda hard to boot a support tape if the tape won't stay in the drive. And, when booting a support tape, the configuration of the OS kernel isn't an issue.

But, I'll need to configure the kernel and use your tools to diagnose further

[Eugeny Brychkov]

You're correct. This drive's behavior says us that something is wrong with drive. If you'll be using this drive you anyway will need cleaning tape. Try it. Drives somehow can detect that tape inserted is a cleaning tape and process tape cleaning its heads
http://www.hp.com/products1/storage/products/media/tapebackup_media/tape_dds/index.html
Eugeny

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

Both blink yellow is normal; it means it is performing the self-test. LEft blinking yellor and right is steady yellow is not normal; it means that the self-test failed for some reason.

I would suspect you have a bad drive.

HTH,
Vince

[curt larson_1]

Eugeny,
downloaded the testing tool and the drive passed with warnings. I'm guessing that was because of the "unable to determine if firmware revision is the lastest" message.

I'll have give the cleaning tape a try.

[curt larson_1]

well gave a cleaning tape a try and it spit that out also. I guess this drive has been dds'ed out. and is ready for a permanent vacation.

thanks to everyone for their suggestions.