tyers@trlluna.trl.oz (P Tyers) (04/06/89)
In article <179@hhb.UUCP>, leonh@hhb.UUCP (leon howorth) writes: Regarding bad batches of DEC TK52 tapes which can damage your drives and contaminate other tapes used in the drive. > The Lot number is either stamped in the center > of the back of the cartridge or it is the leftmost of two > numbers stamped on the top rear of the cartridge. The defective tapes are > those within the following ranges ( letter "x" denotes wildcard > character): > > LOT # TAPE # > ----- ------- > 9x74x xx5x > 9x74x xx0x > 9x80x xx09x or xx09xx > 9x80x xx10x or xx10xx > 9x8xx xx57x or xx57xx > 9x8xx xx58x or xx58xx The DEC publication "DEC STUFF" JANUARY 1989 pp18 has an article by Stephen Piazza Jnr about these tapes and indicates that DEC will replace free of charge. The article also describes the coding scheme which leads to the numbers. You may have some problems in getting access to the mag since it is an internal DEC publication for field service staff, it seems. Our DECdirect sales center had heard of neither the bad batch nor DEC STUFF! Be warned out of recent orders for 40 tapes over the last six months we at Telecom Research have found 24 tapes from these batches. Hence it may be expected that many Australian sites are in a similiar situation. The major batch seems to be 57 ie the xx57x xx57xx out of the list. -- P Tyers, JANET tyers%trlluna.oz@uk.ac.ucl.cs ACSnet tyers@trlluna.oz UUCP {uunet,hplabs,ukc}!munnari!trlluna.oz!tyers CSnet tyers@trlluna.oz ARPAnet tyers%trlluna.oz@uunet.uu.net MAIL: Telecom Research Laboratories, P.O. Box 249, Clayton, VICTORIA 3168,AUST