sean@adelie.Adelie.COM (Sean Conway) (02/23/89)
I recently installed a CFN R-9000 Series 9-track tape drive in a newer Model 125 with DMA-coupled 114MB drives that is also fully loaded (AIX V2.2.0, TCP/IP, SNA Services, Distributed Services, Rabbit 3270, etc...). After working my way past VRM device driver conflicts with the AT Simulator, I finally, I thought, got the thing to work... Basically, I'm trying to read a tape written on an IBM 4381 in EBCDIC using "dd" as following: dd if=/dev/rtm0 of=tt.s bs=8192 Well 38 out of 40 times it read the data off the tape incorrectly WITHOUT reporting ANY ERRORS! I was able to read the same tape 100% succesfully on my VAX 11/750. CFN said it's an "operator" error and we're saying the drive doesn't work period. All drive should be able to tell if it read bad data and throw up a signal. Has anyone experience similiar problems with CFN? I'll appreciate any info or comments... Sean Conway Adelie Corporation sean@adelie.ADELIE.COM
scw@ollie.SEAS.UCLA.EDU (02/28/89)
In article <22856@adelie.Adelie.COM> sean@adelie.Adelie.COM (Sean Conway) writes: [....] >CFN said it's an "operator" error and we're saying the drive doesn't work >period. All drive should be able to tell if it read bad data and throw >up a signal. > >Has anyone experience similiar problems with CFN? > >I'll appreciate any info or comments... Sorry for the posting, couldn't get an internet address. Sean, There is a problem with the CFN 9000 controller in that the FIFO chips are not fast enough. The simplest fix is to slow your tape drive's effective rate down to ~ 125 KB/Sec then the fifo can keep up. Cypher drives have an option 142-(9) in the drive to set the Interface Transfer Rate, if you set it to 126.6 (see section 4.1.2 in the M990 GCR Maintenance Manual [799981-001] Test 142) things should work just fine. <scw> Stephen C. Woods; UCLA SEASNET; 2567 BH;LA CA 90024; (213)-825-8614 UUCP: ...!{ibmsupt,hao!cepu}!ollie}!scw ARPA:scw@{Ollie.,}SEAS.UCLA.EDU