karl@cygnet.CYGNETSYSTEMS (Karl Danz) (01/28/85)
[] There have been at least two postings regarding a problem with Emulex's TC7000 tape controller. When rewinding, the VAX "hangs" -- nothing else happens until the tape gets back to Load Point. There is a get around, which is to always use the "no-rewind- on-close" tape device, and then issue the separate command: mt -f <tapename> rewoffl This is inconvenient -- the tape unloads instead of going back to Load Point -- but it sure beats stopping all processing for 4 or 5 minutes while the tape rewinds! The fix is to get a PROM upgrade from Emulex. We went from Rev. C to Rev. F this weekend and that solved the problem. I don't know anything about other revision levels. I also don't know why Emulex ships cards with back level PROMs... this was a new card for us. The TC7000 sits on the MASSBUS and controls a TU77 (or compatible) tape drive. We have a Cipher M990, but people have had the same problem with the CDC 92185. We still have two outstanding problems: 1. The Cipher does not stream at 6250 BPI. 2. We cannot select the density with software (i.e. varying the minor device number has no effect). I have little hope of solving #1, but #2 would be real nice. Any help would be appreciated. -- Karl Danz Cygnet Systems ...!hplabs!cygnet!karl
acheng@uiucdcs.UUCP (01/29/85)
>/* Written 3:45 pm Jan 28, 1985 by karl@cygnet in uiucdcs:net.unix-wizar */ >/* ---------- "Emulex TC7000 -- "rewind hang"" ---------- */ > >There have been at least two postings regarding a problem with >Emulex's TC7000 tape controller. When rewinding, the VAX "hangs" >-- nothing else happens until the tape gets back to Load Point. >... >The fix is to get a PROM upgrade from Emulex. We went from Rev. C >to Rev. F this weekend and that solved the problem. I don't know >anything about other revision levels. I also don't know why Emulex >ships cards with back level PROMs... this was a new card for us. We have installed a Kennedy 9400 tridensity tape port on our 750 with the TC7000 too. We got the same rewind problems with same PROM solutions. But we also installed another 9400 on our Pyramid 90x using their interface board (what i don't know). It has the similar rewind problem but Pyramid has not figured out a solution. I am wondering if Emulex and Pyramid got the boards from the same vendor/design. >... >We still have two outstanding problems: > > 1. The Cipher does not stream at 6250 BPI. > 2. We cannot select the density with software (i.e. > varying the minor device number has no effect). I read through our version of the TC7000 document, somewhere in a "hidden" page it says the TC7000 works for VAX 750 only, not 780 yet. Don't know if this helps. However, we are using the 4.2 distributed ht.c to drive the tape and are able to remotely access the tape by 6250 or 1600 bpi. The ht.c can access a high/low densities and we set up the 9400 tape port to switch between 6250/1600. We figured that if we really want the 800 bpi, it can be manually set. Hope the above helps a bit. albert cheng acheng@uiuc.ARPA ihnp4!uiucdcs!acheng
emrath@uiucdcsb.UUCP (01/30/85)
Yeah, those rewinds staying uninterruptible (i.e. no intr or stop signals) were a pain, but I quickly got in the habit of using "mt rew &", and then forgot about the problem.