Exabyte exb-85058HE-0000 tape drive issues

[Rahul Khare]

VMS gurus,

We are having an old VMS VAXcluster 4100A running on OpenVMS VAX V6.2. It is connected to an external tape drive, device type EXABYTE EXB-85058HE-0000. The tape drive has gone bad and we would like to replace it with a DEC TLZ10 or TLZ07 tape drive.

Please let me know how can I go about the same.

Thanks in advance,
Rahul.

[Steven Schweda]

Remove the old one, install the new one?

What's the mystery?

[Rahul Khare]

I believe I did not post it correct. Here is what I wish to do:-

NODE1(1):[XYZ]-> sho dev mk /full

Magtape NODE1$MKA100:, device type EXABYTE EXB-85058HE-0000, is online, record-
oriented device, file-oriented device, error logging is enabled.

Error count 6 Operations completed 74
Owner process "" Owner UIC [SYSTEM]
Owner process ID 00000000 Dev Prot S:RWPL,O:RWPL,G:R,W
Reference count 0 Default buffer size 512
Density unknown Format Normal-11

Volume status: no-unload on dismount, beginning-of-tape, write-locked, odd parity.


This tape drive has gone bad on the system, and hence I would like to replace it with a TLZ10 DEC tape drive. If I remove the bad tape drive and connect a TLZ tape drive, would it auto detect the tape drive? Or do I need to make some changes?

Please comment

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] would it auto detect the tape drive?

It should if you re-boot. Otherwise, on a
VAX, a command like the following might do
the job:

MCR SYSGEN AUTOCONFIGURE ALL

> Or do I need to make some changes?

If the new drive has the same SCSI ID as the
old drive, and it's connected to the same
SCSI adapter, then it should have the same
device name (and you shouldn't even need to
do the SYSGEN AUTOCONFIGURE).

[Hoff]

Set the new device SCSI ID to the old device ID. Shut down OpenVMS and power down the box and the SCSI enclosure(s). Swap the drive. Reboot. Test. Done.

(I'm not a big fan of breaking the SCSI chain on a running system. I prefer to shut down and power down. Parallel SCSI isn't -- with specific configuration exceptions -- usually considered a bus that's entirely reliable with hot-plugging. I know I wouldn't hot-plug it with a production server, assuming I didn't have a way to quiesce the SCSI bus.)

[Art Wiens]

I think I can say 100% of the times that I have tried to replace a SCSI tape drive on a VAX 4100 series machine with VMS running, the system crashed when the new drive was powered on. Powering off and removing it was fine. All flavours of Exabytes and TZ8x's as well. (Note the system disks were on the DSSI bus so VMS could theoretically continue)

Spare yourself the pain and do a planned shutdown. As well, you'll get a good idea from a >>> SHOW DEVICE that you might have a working drive.

Cheers,
Art

[Joseph Huber_1]

And You are aware that TLZ10 is a 4mm DAT drive, not 8mm like Exabyte ?
This means, all Your backup/archive tapes on 8mm will be unusable from now on!

[Hoff]

Looking at this with cynicism colored by experience, the OP is looking to use DDS/DAT, which implies that the archives will be difficult to restore. DDS/DAT is an inexpensive tape technology for a reason, after all. If the archives were intended to be restored or tapes used more than a few times, we'd probably be discussing a (used?) DLT drive instead.

[Rahul Khare]

awesome responses...thanks all. Will try to go through some of the suggestions on a similar (not close enough but similar) test box and will move accordingly.

Thanks for your guidance.

[Art Wiens]

As always ... you can say "thanks" by assigning points on a scale of 0 to 10 depending on how useful you thought the answer might have been.

Cheers,
Art