Mike...

I am not sure what your error scenario was but I can briefly describe
adsm end of tape processing...which is common to all tape devices.

ADSM writes end of file marks after each file on tape...at the end of
a tape volume, it also writes an end of tape mark.  If for some reason
the end of tape mark is not written, when adsm recognizes this it will
mark the tape volume readonly.  All files on the tape should be
accessible but adsm doesn't know what's going on at the end of the
tape so it does not write any additional files to that tape.  This
is currently a known restriction that we have been looking at.  To make
the volume writable again you need to do a MOVE DATA on the volume and
then let the tape volume return to scratch.

None of this should happen unless there is some kind of
system outage or i/o error on the tape volume (like what you had).

...Greg Tevis


 ============================================================================
 Thank you Greg for a good insite on the 3490E operation. To say it is quirky
 is an understatement. I'll be eagerly awaiting any driver that would make the
 operations easier. I have also filed a PMR with IBM on my problems, but could
 you explain how end-of-tape processing is handled, and why ADSM reports an I/O
 error and flags the tape as "read only" ?

 Thanks in advance
 Mike Cassidy