I've been seeing these exact problems for weeks with on og my remote site.
I escalated the problem within IBM. They sent out their 3494 "top Gun" who
did an extended PM on all the drives in this system(8). The problems cleard
up for a week and now we're seeing them again. Ask you CS if you have the
double clip retainer that holds the tape in the drive when its inserted. It
seems like they've flip flopped on the issue of whether or not it should be
removed. Ours are all removed now.  We still have problems wih tapes
sticking in drives where a reset of the drive and a power off do-not
correct the problem.




"Richard Sims" <rbs AT BU DOT EDU>@VM.MARIST.EDU> on 07/12/2001 10:49:47 AM

Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>

Sent by:  "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>


To:   ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc:

Subject:  Re: Tape/Drive problems


...
>IBM says it sounds as if the tape that was in rmt4 sounds as if it's
>dragging so they removed it from the library. ...

Hi, Geoff - "Dragging"?  I've never heard that one before, in all the
            years I've been working with IBM 34xx/35xx tapes.  In my
experience, mechanical problems have always been due to drive problems
or irregularities, and not the cartridges.  I'm very suspicious of CEs
who blame cartridges for drive problems.  You didn't say what they did
to fix the problem.  If they didn't work on the drives and fix whatever
their problems were, per diagnostic codes, then you didn't get a fix.
Certainly, if this is not a new tape and has been mounted and used
many times before, then there is little probability of the tape being
the problem.  Remember, there's 1 moving part in the tape, and a helluva
lot more in the drive.

We've had a bunch of problems with the upgraded 3590E drives.  (Why,
when the upgrade involved a whole pallet of boxes and parts, they
didn't simply replace the drives with factory-certified units, is
a big question for IBM, particularly given all the problems that
customers have had with the field-upgraded units.)  Our CEs have
found a lot of problems with the vacuum subsystems, and have
replaced some.  With tapes stuck in drives, I've *always* been able
to eject them either from the drive front panel or a power cycle of
the drive, and once resolved get the drive back into service under
ADSM, without restarting ADSM or otherwise affecting service with
the remaining drives.  The affected tapes went on to be used by ADSM,
as is: no need to move the data.  (It's not a tape problem.)

Per the TSM Messages manual, ASC=15, ASCQ=01 is a mechanical positioning
error; your ASC=5A, ASCQ=01 is operator media removal; ASC=3A, ASCQ=00
is medium not present.  I doubt that the problem drives were properly
reset for TSM to know of a state transition.  Make sure that a Reset is
done from the front panel, and a power cycle if needed, with a clean
state reflected on the front panel afterward.

  Richard Sims, BU