[mod.computers.apollo] 6250 tape drives

dhv@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU (David Vanderbilt) (07/01/86)

   My two bits on 6250 drives:

   We bought the Apollo-marketed 6250 tape drive (made by CDC) about 6
months ago.  I would say we have benefitted from the speed improvement.
However, we have had intermittent hardware errors, which are partic-
ularly annoying because RBAK and WBAK do not recover gracefully.  We
finally got the tape read-write head replaced last week, and this seems
to have improved matters.

Erstad@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (07/03/86)

We too have the CDC drive marketed through Apollo.  We have also
experienced numerous intermittent failures both in hardware and software
(The latter primarily occurs when trying to RBAK a file from the middle
or end of a tape - I think we finally got a patch for that).  We have
seen things like tapes which cannot be read several times in a row and
then the same tape can be read consistently (very scary).

It should be noted that our tape problems are exacerbated because of
some contractual disputes between variuos maintenance suppliers; thus,
things have dragged on longer than they otherwise might.