Need to know DDS drive used to write backup tapes

Zane H. Healy healyzh at aracnet.com
Sun Oct 3 09:40:39 CDT 2004


>On that subject, can anyone shed light on what appears to be a common
>failure mode for DLT7000 drives?  I have (2) which misbehave in the same
>manner.  At powerup, the head recalibrates (bzzzzzttt), the door lock
>solenoid activates and the green LED on the bottom right lights. 
>However, all the density and tape type LEDS on the left simply flash in
>sync approx. 2x per second.  An inserted tape will load, but that's all
>she wrote.  No track calibration, no shoeshine - nothing.  Exact same
>symptoms on both units.
>
>One was working until the power was accidently interrupted in the midst of
>a backup.  The second was a $5.00 swap-meet item picked up in the hope of
>yielding parts to get the first working <g>.

I don't happen to have the manual handy, but have the drives 
swallowed the tape leader?  It's a bit of a pain in the neck to 
restring the leader on a DLT7000 compared to a TK50, but it's still 
not that hard.  When you look in the drive, you should see something 
that looks like the bottom end of the following:
http://zane.brouhaha.com/~healyzh/TK50-Leader.gif

		Zane



-- 
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
|                                  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |



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