SUMMARY exabyte misery

From: Tim Gibbs (gibbs@src.bae.co.uk)
Date: Mon Dec 10 1990 - 08:24:11 CST


Last week I wrote saying that my exabyte caused my 4/490 grief with the exabyte
hanging up. I think the nail has hit the camel on the head.

 Steve Giuliano mailed me and said he had similar problems

> I have the exact same setup except I have a third
> party exabyte drive made by Coperico. Like Sun,
> Coperico has replaced the drive even though the
> problem only surfaces on the 4/490 (it works like
> a dream on a Sparc 1+ and 330).

 After a while sun came up with a "solution" Steve said:

> After talking with Sun for several days,
> they 'found' a patch for the problem. Sun's
> bug number for this is 1042822; the patch number
> is 100134-01.
> Things have been working fine on my drive for two days now

 I have'nt yet received the patch from SUN yet, but this is probably the
 solution.

 I had several other replies
 1) Bob Rogers <auspex!brogers> said that there was a known capability
      problem with exabyte firmware with Sun OS. Current level is 2600.
     Check what level Sun ship. Also David LeVine <levine@dtg.nsc.com> said
     that his drives were ok under 4.0.3 with the Delta driver, but switched to the sun driver for 4.1 and this brought problems. His proms were changed
     and :
> the problem diminished considerably but not completely.
 2) Others told me to check cable lengths and/or scsi addresses or scsi
     controller board.
 3) stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com suggested cleaning the heads and using only Sony
     tapes. He had no problems with his 4/490 4.1PSRA
    Well We clean the heads regularily and use only Sony tapes (also tried
     proper exabyte tapes).
 4) Others pointed fingers at the scsi driver.
 5) There were also complaints of a 1/2 inch drive on a 4/260 doing similar
     things
  6) Morry Katz <katz@rpal.com> had similar problems with a 1/2 inch drive
     on a 4/490 under 4.0.3
 7) alexl@daemon.cna.tek.com said his exabyte becomes inaccessible.
> I power down the drive, and then power it up again. I then put a tape
> back in and after a minute or so it will time out and may then be
        accessible.

 Thanks to all that responded.

Especially
Steve Giuliano <indetech!smw002!dev0601!steve>

Bob Rogers <auspex!brogers>
jeremy@jarthur.claremont.edu
Ric Anderson ric@cs.arizona.edu
Wayne Little <rwl@ee.umr.edu>
Dick St.Peters <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
David LeVine levine@dtg.nsc.com
Peter Scott <pjs@euclid.jpl.nasa.gov>
alexl@daemon.cna.tek.com
Simon Hackett <simon@ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
rick@wiau.medical-biophysics.manchester.ac.uk
Morry Katz <katz@rpal.com>

 Tim Gibbs
 gibbs@src.bae.co.uk



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