Oh how I hate being on night calls...

I took a trouble call from a remote site (very remote, reachable once a
week by air) that has a BIG problem with both of their two tape drives.
Both of these problems are new to me, and I'm hoping that someone can offer
suggestions, especially since the site is out of HP support range (sorry, I
can't say exactly where it is).

They have two systems, one classic, one iX.  The classic normally has an HP
7974 tape drive on it, and the iX has an HPIB 7980 tape drive on it.

Twice a month the classic system is backed up to tape (on the 1st and the
16th of the month) at the end of the day.  The iX box is backed up daily.

Today, before the backup and while running production, the system failed.
A warmstart was unsuccessful, as was a coolstart, so they decided to do a
coldload.  They mounted the tape (on the 7974), closed the tape drive door,
hit the load and on-line buttons, and walked away.  At the console they
started the coldload, and were greeted with nasty sounds from the 7974.
The coldload aborted, and they went over to the 7974.  The tape was broken
near the upper (supply) reel, and there were dozens of feet of tape wrapped
around the capstan.

They turned off the tape drive and unwrapped the tape from the capstan, and
discovered that the coating that is on the capstan (which is normally like
a soft rubber) was sticky and gooey like an adhesive.  In the process of
removing the tape from the capstan, most of the coating on the capstan came
off on the tape.

Question 1.  Has anyone heard of the coating on the capstan turning sticky
and gooey and coming off onto a tape?

Okay, so with that tape drive down, they called for help.  The first person
who took the call decided that they should connect the 7980 tape to the
classic system, change the tape drive's address, then coldload from the
tape, configuring the 7980 tape into the classic system during the coldload.

Over the phone he told the operator at the remote site how to re cable the
tape drives, find the tape drive addresses, and change the 7980's address
setting.

Well, the operator apparently got the 7980 un cabled from the iX system
okay, but while he was supposed to be changing the address, he hit a wrong
button and apparently ended up changing some tape drive configuration
settings.  When I talked to the guy that took the trouble call, he said he
didn't know exactly what the operator had done, but that it was after that
that the 7980 started "misbehaving".

Apparently after the operator accidentally changed some config settings, he
got the 7980's address changed, cabled up the 7980 to the classic system,
then tried to mount the first reel of the last full backup (which he had to
use because the 7974 had destroyed the system's coldload tape).  He put
reel 1 of the last sysdump into the 7980, closed the door, the tape loaded,
but he could not get it to go on-line.  The operator reported to the
trouble desk that the 7980's panel had the following lights lit:

   WRITE EN
   6250
   BOT
   EOT

Yes, both BOT and EOT lights were lit.  When the trouble desk called me, I
had them verify that both BOT and EOT were lit.

A TEST then IOMAP on the classic displayed the 7980 at the proper DRT, and
the tape was in the drive, but the tape would not go on-line.  Then the
operator informed us that not only will the 7980 ignore pressing the
on-line button, but it won't let him unload the tape.  After trying all
sorts of ideas, we came to the conclusion that for now the tape is stuck in
the tape drive.

Just for giggles and grins, we had the operator re cable the 7980 back to
the iX system and change the address back to that used on the iX system.
The iX system sees the 7980 as "not ready", but we still can't get the tape
drive to unload the tape and release the lock on the door.

Question 2.  Has anyone had a similar problem where both the BOT and EOT
indicators are lit at the same time?

Question 3.  We now have what we think are accurate displays of the INFO
values the 7980 displays (shown below).  They don't have another 7980 or we
would wake someone up to get them to display the configuration  settings on
it, so does anyone have a 7980 that they could go to and get the
configuration settings from and email those settings to me?

   Info 1 Displays    Info 2 Displays    Info 3 Displays
      W20 GCR            W 0e00             WH 0015
      WH   00            R 0e00             W5 4605
      W  0000                               WD 3e11
      WD 0e00

   Info 4 Displays    Info 5 Displays
      WH 0000               GCR
      W5 0007            W 2e07
      WD 2e08            R 4e08
                           PE
                         W 2e07
                         R 2e08

Note:  The operator wasn't sure the "e"'s in the above were "e"'s and not
"c"'s.

Question 4.  Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get the 7980 to
unload the tape and open the door?

Ah, what a night, and oh, what a morning tomorrow will be.

Any and all help/suggestions welcome and very gratefully accepted!

John
--------------------------------------------------------------
John Korb                            email: [log in to unmask]
Innovative Software Solutions, Inc.

The thoughts, comments, and opinions expressed herein are mine
and do not reflect those of my employer(s), or anyone else.