dave@helm.UUCP (David Goldblatt) (07/31/86)
[ Here it comes just a walkin' down the street, singing "eat me.. eat me.." ] At my place of employment [not helm - I just leach their computer] we have a MicroVAX II, 71Meg drive, and sometimes one TK-50 tape drive. Has anyone besides me had grief with the TK-50? Ours failed one day [more than once, but this was the final straw..] when the leader slipped off, which from what I hear is a common occurrence, and promptly shredded itself. It is now somewheres in Illinois being fixed by DEC. We had a temporary drive installed, and 45 minutes after installation, it too died on us. Fortunately, we managed to fix it [leader got hung up]. Does anyone out there have any recommendations on alternatives to the TK-50? Unfortunately, it is DEC's media distribution method, so we're not going to be able to rid ourselves of it, but basically I need something to frequently back up our hard drive onto. Any info would be appreciated. -dg- ...!philabs!helm!dave ...!trixie!polyof!helm!dave "Just a lonely BITNETter..."
bc@cyb-eng.UUCP (Bill Crews) (08/08/86)
> At my place of employment [not helm - I just leach their computer] > we have a MicroVAX II, 71Meg drive, and sometimes one TK-50 tape drive. > Has anyone besides me had grief with the TK-50? Ours failed one day [more > than once, but this was the final straw..] when the leader slipped off, > which from what I hear is a common occurrence, and promptly shredded itself. > It is now somewheres in Illinois being fixed by DEC. We had a temporary > drive installed, and 45 minutes after installation, it too died on us. > Fortunately, we managed to fix it [leader got hung up]. Does anyone out > there have any recommendations on alternatives to the TK-50? Unfortunately, > it is DEC's media distribution method, so we're not going to be able to > rid ourselves of it, but basically I need something to frequently back up our > hard drive onto. Any info would be appreciated. > > -dg- Consider this a ditto to just about everything you said. I have no answers; I just like to share my misery. Between DEC's lack of interest in fixing an obviously unacceptable situation with their TK50 and their total lack of interest in providing a disk formatting program (I think they MIGHT let us have one for THOUSANDS of dollars), I find it difficult to become a DEC enthusiast. I'm still trying, though. (I KNOW I am; everybody TELLS me! :-) -- bc Bill Crews @ NetCor Data International ..!{seismo,gatech,ihnp4}!ut-sally!cyb-eng!bc (512) 835-2937
cetron@utah-cs.UUCP (Edward J Cetron) (08/09/86)
[ offering to the great line eat We have had no trouble at all with the 5 tk50 drives that i have to work with.....we did have a LOT of trouble with the second batch of tk50 cartridges....As I understand the problem: 3M made the first large production run exactly to Digital specs...and they worked fine...Then, in a cost cutting move, they changed the formulation of the glue holding the leader to the tape itself...and they blew it...it degraded and let go and gummed up the works...etc,etc... Well Digital was furious and forced (??) them to recall all of them.. Since we have gotten the new batches, I have not had any problems at all... (note: we only use them for backup and software distribution) (note2: also, when using backup, explicitly use as large a block size as possible....I have found that vms backup with a block size of 32000 and 5 buffers will back up a 71 meg disk in about 15 minutes...) -ed cetron center for engineering design univ of utah cetron%utah-cbd@utah-cs.arpa