We will be doing an update to our tape drives around the end of the
month. I've looked over the older messages concerning this and all I saw was
a dilemma about microcode levels. The messages were dated the last part of
1999, so I would image that the microcode has been updated since then.
        Here's the situation, we are running (1) 3494 library with (2)
3590-B1A drives attached to an IBM Netfinity 7000 M10 server running WinNT4
SP5, TSM version 3.7.2.
        We currently have about 250 "J" tapes on hand and we will have those
used up in about 60-90 days. That's why we are going with the newer drives.
We understand that they have 256 tracks on the new drives as opposed to the
128 tracks on the older ones. Thus doubling our tape capacity.
        Now the question, we have been told that the new drives will read
and write to our current "J" tapes just fine. They will read the 128 tracks
and then as we do our tape reclamations it will then write to the tape on
256 tracks. As we cycle in the older tapes in for reclaiming they all become
256 track at some point. We generally have about 5-6 tapes a day go offsite
and about that many returning each day as well. Is this correct??
        I also understand the E1A drives will work the best if we go to the
newer "K" tapes, however you can't have "J" and "K" tapes in the library at
the same time for some reason.


David Tyree
Microcomputer Specialist
South Georgia Medical Center
229.333.1155

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