T10000 drive just unloading tapes

[mletendre]

We just got 3 T10000 drives in, but only one power supply so we are running one drive now. We started initializing tapes and did about 310 fine, then all of a sudden every tape we load in the drive lowers the tape as usual to load, then almost immediately raises it and ejects.

We have tried loading in several (over 20) tapes randomly picked from the remaining tapes. and they all do the same thing. We have also taken tapes that we already initialized and they load fine and we can re-inialize them and they seem to work as i would expect.


Now here is the kicker, I took both of our other T10K drives and the tapes will load in and stay loaded (doesn't eject them immediately). Ok so sounds like I should just use one of the other two drives right??? well not really since those two drives will not write to these tapes for some reason. I tried going into the drive using the Virtual Operator's Panel and trying to MAKE DATA TAPE or recreate the MIR and it fails on the tapes I am having issues with using the other drives.

We do not have a contract with SUN as these are used drives.

 

[mletendre]

Upon further testing I have concluded that it must be the tapes, though I do not know why this has happened. is there a chip reader similar to what is available for LTOs?

We have about 700 of these issue tapes, which a HUGE chunk of money.

 

[STKman]

There is not a chip in the cartridges. The MIR region on the tape does the same job as the chip on LTO cartridges. I don't have any idea what can take out 700 cartridges, unless the factory written servo tracks somehow got magnetised, X-rayed, or whatever during transit or storage.

Are there any error logs you can access from VOP to give an indication why they are failing?

 

[mletendre]

When I try to make data tape or anything like that the VOP just states failed and gives an error code like 0x7 some odd numbers, which means nothing to me, I don't remember what the exact numbers are but I tried googling them and searching SUNs site and the PDF manuals for them and found nothing, I can try to get that number again today and post that.

 

[mletendre]

I was just thinking, these tapes were broght to as as being "Labeled, never initialized or used" and we were asked to delable, relable and initialize.

However I never trust someone 100% when I hear that they were never initialized or used.

Could there be something with the encryption or possibly that these were initialized on a T10000B drive?

 

[mletendre]

i think you may be mistaken STKman as I was reading through the documentation again (

http://dlc.sun.com/pdf/96174revEB/96174revEB.pdf

) and on page 30 of the pdf (page 28 of the document) under Media information Region it talks about the RFID chip in the cartridge.

about 2 pages later is a section for invalid media information conditions, which I think these tapes may fall into... however,these are not in a rack mount system so it doesn't not show the FCS like it talks about in the documentation, is there a way to read these through the VOP?

I also read in there that there is a manual firmware update for the T10000A drive to read the MIR produced by the T1000B drive, but doesn't say what that firmware is for me to check against.

 

[STKman]

Well spotted about the chip. I've worked on 9840/9940 (not T10K yet) so was going by what I knew about those models. I have not used VOP but the PDF says that 4 digit FSC codes are posted it if you have no operator panel. There are two versions of VOP (operator and Sun Engineer), but this is the T10K operator's Guide saying FSC's are posted to VOP, so you must be able to view these codes in the operator version.

I will post here if I find out what the code level is for T10KA to read T10KB MIR.

 

[mletendre]

I am trying to test these tapes on another drive (one that will keep the tapes loaded)

when I set the drive Offline and go to format tape ->Make data tape I get this message:

"Failed: Data Cartridge Format Error oxa724"

Any ideas?

 

[STKman]

Fault 0xA724 means...

"The Engineering Port Task failed to write a tape mark while doing a make-data-tape. Try make-data-tape again. If that fails, replace the tape. Media 80%, Microcode 20%"

 

[mletendre]

where did you find this as it is not located in the PDF I have for the manual.... ?

 

[STKman]

It's StorageTek internal data. I have my contacts...

 

[mletendre]

Lucky you! I wish I just had a list of the error codes here, seems like every time the 9840/9940 or the T10K drives throw an odd code I have to call Chuck or Mike at Pinetree or Stuart hall to get the reason for the code, If I was smart i would have wrote it all down years ago and could have had my own resource book by now!

If you ever know of any of these service/maintenance books that come up for grabs let us know, we could use them! We have some for the IBM 3590 drives and they come in handy. Now I just need one for all the other drives (LTO 1-4 mostly HP though, 3480, 3590, DLT, SDLT, 3570, 9840, 9940, T10000... Im probably forgetting a few in there)

We try to do most of our own repairs in house and do pretty well on most of it...

 

[mletendre]

The only thing i can find so far is that these tapes that are causing an issue seem to be originally labeled and initialized for a B drive (I was confirmed they WERE initialized before). The documentation states that there is a firmware update for an A drive to read the information on the B chip, but does not say what the firmware is. the lowest firmware level we on these 3 drives is 1.31.103, can anyone verify if this

1) would cause an issue with the drive writing to the tape
2) would a firmware update correct this?