FW for old storagetek L40 with IBM lto-3

[msoltyspl]

Hi,

For personal experimentation and use, I've bought used IBM lto-3 drive, which was originally used in STK L40 library (or at the very least, in some StorageTek product, judging from the tray; I was told though it was taken from L40). The drive works perfectly fine, though the firmware is pretty ancient - judging from the number and some other vendors that used IBM drives internally, it's the very first one - 5BG2.

If the drive came from any other vendor's device - IBM itself, HP, Dell, Tandberg - there would be no problems with getting latest matching firmware. But Oracle is Oracle - and they want money for elemntary things like bioses/fw for obsolete devices.

My questions are:

Is there any place with perhaps archived versions, where I could download such firmware (or to be precise - as it's only about the tape drive in my case - ~1.5mb file for lto-3/scsi/lvd oemed by IBM, used in L40).

Or if not - is there someone with L40 device, having more recent firmware version at hand (or perhaps still with access to Oracle "my support" nonsense) and kind enough to help ?

 

[STKman]

Hello,

Before taking this advice, maybe wait for another poster to confirm, as I've not tried this. As I understand it, the only difference between normal IBM LTO firmware and the flavour used with StorageTek libraries is the tape drive TTI serial interface. The STK version of LTO firmware customizes the TTI interface code so that the library controller can talk to the tape drive.
Your post would suggest that you want to use the LTO as a standalone unit. That being the case, you should be able to download IBM’s current LTO3 firmware from the IBM support site and make up a firmware tape using IBM’s free ITDT tool.

You can then write over the ancient firmware with the new version. With IBM LTO’s you can do this from the front panel using presses of the unload button as described in the IBM LTO user guide.

 

[msoltyspl]

With the IBM drives themselves - I can prepare and update the firmware, but I would need some other LTO3 drive with a newer microcode at hand. I can't prepare FMR tape with itdt from a file though (or I can't find the way to do it). Any pointers in this direction, regarding tools or methods ?

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[STKman]

Firmware V87G0 is available for download at the IBM support website. ITDT ver 6.0 is available for download also. The blurb on the ITDT download page says:

"The ITDT Tool offers multiple functional capabilities that simplify the task of updating tape and library firmware. It is available for most major platforms and requires no special device drivers. In addition to the executable file, a README file is also provided."

 

[msoltyspl]

I know, tried that, and a few other versions (including Dell and Tandberg as well). While the usual tools have no problems handling the drive or trying to update it - the drive itself refuses any of those firmwares during the upgrade.

Either way, thanks for the suggestions.

 

[TekAndy]

What does the tray look like? Was this a Storagetek L40 or a SUN L40??? This gets confusing sometimes because Sun bought Storagetek. Both libraries are totally different.

 

[msoltyspl]

I've made few pics - labels + tray - available at:

http://soltys.ziu.info/temp/LTO3.tar

The person I bought it from said it was StorageTek L40, though he used word "probably" as well.