Re: Tape Drive Compatibility

["Larry D. Bolhuis" <lbolhui@xxxxxxx>]

I have seen this problem with NON-IBM (ie DD or EMC) 8MM tape drives.  The 
controller in the drive
emulates a 9348 (9 Track 1/2 inch) drive rather than the 8MM 7208 drive.  The 
drives that I am
familiar with will only support the *FMT2GB size (2.5GB tapes).  I would 
suggest trying the INZTAP
on the 7208 and specifying *FMT2GB for the size.  We did not have much luck 
with this and found that
although the 3rd party drive would read most tapes produced on the IBM drive, 
the IBM drive would
never read one produced on the 3rd party drive.

  If this does not work, you may resort to what we did: Junk the 3rd party 
drive and borrow a
7208-002. (This drastic step was taken once we discovered that the 3rd party 
drive would not
function as an Alt-IPL device either and that was the last straw.)  Maintenance 
support for the
drives was below crummy anyway and they needed entirely too much of it.

HTH - Larry

> > I'm in a quandry...  I have a tape device that comes up as a 9348.  I have
> > another tape device on the same 400 that is a IBM 7208-002.  I am want to
> > write a tape on the 9348 and read it on the 7208. (Don't ask why, its just a
> > test for a real move from one 400 to another).   I am INZTAPing the tape on
> > the 9348 as *FMT2GB.  When I try to DSPTAP on the 7208, all I get is a
> > message "cannot process volume".  I've made sure the physical tape is fine
> > and have written/read to each drive individually.  (SAVLIB'S, not compressed
> > or compacted, if that matters).
> >
> > Am I missing something or is this just not possible.  Help???
> 
> if you format the tape on the 7208, can you write to in from the 9348?
> 
> can you read files produced on the 7208 on the 9348?
> 
-- 
Larry Bolhuis         |
Arbor Solutions, Inc  | Two rules to success in life:
(616) 451-2500        | 1. Never tell people everything you know.
lbolhui@ibm.net       |
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