The DDS-3 Autoloader is a strange and finicky device, but it can be made to
work well.  The Semi Loaded message means that it did not really eject the tape
at the end of the rewind, it simply placed it offline and positioned the
magazine to receive it.  You need to issue an extra eject to the device.  You
might want to investigate the use of DEVCTL.MPEXL.TELESUP to help you with
this.

As for your second issue.  There is only one product able to fully control a
robotic device in random mode, (which is what you want,) on the HP 3000 and
that is HIBACK.  As a matter of fact, I have the exact same autoloader
connected to the HP 3000 in the office and it is used by HIBACK.  It receives
the backups from all the other servers in the office (NT, HP-UX), including the
HP 3000 itself and stores them on the tapes in the magazine.  When I need to
restore something for one of the servers, HIBACK gets the appropriate tape and
loads it in the drive and away it goes.  No other product can do this.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Wednesday, 01 December, 1999 11:40 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        C6367A Tape drive on HP3000

I recently installed the C6367A drive on our 3000, it is the DDS3 drive
with the 6 tape autochanger.  A couple of questions have come up since
its installation.

At the end of our backups the last tape remains in a "Semi Loaded"
state according to the front display.  This is great if you want to be
able to issue a DEVCONTROL call to put it back on line.  But, at some
point you need to have it unload the tape so that the next tape will be
loaded.  Is there a command or intrinsic that can be used to tell the
drive to eject the tape.

The other question deals with telling the drive to load a specific
tape.  Example if your backup takes 3 tapes and you want to
automatically VSTORE the tape is there a way to tell the drive
programatically to dismount the 3rd tape and reload the 1st tape?



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