Hp SureStore 80ex on Windows NT4 Server

[CA1046942]

I am trying to recover an old Surestore 80ex MO unit in order to park there some data which are seldom accessed on the company network.
I hooked it to an Adaptec 2940AU SCSI card on an host PC running WinNT 4 Server service pack 6a. I installed HP LLT tool and flashed both firmwares; drive has now rev. 1.16 while autoloader has rev. 4.12. Everything went fine.
SCSI bios (SCSI disk information menu) reports correctly on SCSI ID 4 the optical drive, but the media changer HP C1100J -which I set to scsi ID 5- is reported somehow 'garbled' with unrecognizable characters. Also HP LLT is correctly seeing drive but not media changer. The unit seems to work perfectly, does not give any error relevant to mechanics or PCA controller.What can I do to correct this problem? Also, can you advise what kind of management software could I run to manage this unit? Thanks & rgds.

[meloni]

Hi Marco,
I had in the past some case like this, and every time the cause was bad connections, or bad cables, on pin not reporting the right signal will modify the enquiry string, and make the unit not recognisable form OS and L&TT.

Internal test work fine because they canot test the scsi interface to the Host

marino

[CA1046942]

Hi Marino
I replaced following parts:
1) scsi cables (2)checking if bent pins were present but there weren't
2) scsi terminator at the bottom of the MO unit
3) scsi adapter (now running with a AHA2940U but I tried also an AVA2920 to no avail)

Can it be something relevant to firmware version of the changer? If yes, how do I revert to previous version?

N.B.: The MO drive works flawlessy, I can read, format, copy etc. I inserted a cartridge manually and tried that...

[CA713937]

Marco,

It sounds like the product inquiry string is messed up. The inquiry string is changable, and it's possble it somehow got messed up in the firmware update process. There are two options: 1) change to the hardcoded inquiry string, or 2) redownload the inquiry string.

Option 1 is the easiest: Change configuration 40 (Select Inquiry mode) to "On". When set to "off", it uses the downloadable string. When set to "On", it uses a hardcoded string.

After setting this config, power cycle the unit and see of the inquiry string now reports normally.

Option 2 would require an LTT password. You would then use "manual product identification" to select the garbled product, and then use a firmware update option to update the product ID.

[CA814553]

Hi -

If this were my problem I would start to look for unintended 8-bit/16-bit SCSI bus transitions and/or termination problems associated with the same.

Peter Brewster
TD Systems Corporation

[CA1046942]

Hi Dave
I owe you one!!
The problem was successfully fixed after I changed to hardcode string. Now the unit is perfectly seen by HP LTT and cartridges can be moved, swapped and so on. Thank you all anyway for the precious help.
The only problem left is that the OS (WinNT4 SP6) sees each 5,2 GB cartridge as 2,4 GB, I think this is relevant to double face read/write that is not supported....any ideas about this?

[meloni]

hi,
The media is a double face, so 5,2 Gb means 2,6 GB per face. You have to swap the disk and use face B in order to achieve the full capacity.

Marino