In response to Othmar's attached question regarding how to easily remove a
tape from the 3494's inventory:

Volume, delete from Library Manager     A destroyed tape which the 3494 spits
 database                               out will remain in the library's
                                        database indefinitely, with a category
                                        code x'FFFA'.  To get rid of that
                                        useless entry, use the FFFB
                                        (Purge Volume) category code, as in:
                                        'mtlib -l /dev/lmcp0 -vC -V VolName
                                                -t FFFB'

The response that Othmar got from IBM was certainly disappointing.  They
should be the subject matter experts, and as such should have been able to
advise how to easily do this by simply changing the volume's category code.

    Richard Sims, Boston University OIT

=================== in response to:
We are running ADSM V3 with an IBM 3494 with IBM 3590 tape drives attached
to it. We are quite satisfied with that configuration but have some handling
problems: After a tape drive "eating" a tape the tape was removed by IBM
service and put to trash. Some time later I noticed that the tape was still
held in the inventory of the 3494. Doing an inventory update lead to the
status quo (output of the mtlib command):

state................Volume present in Library, but Inaccessible
                     Volume is Misplaced
                     Volume was Manually Ejected
class................10
volser...............J70212
category.............FFFA
subsystem affinity...07 08 05 06 03 04 01 02
                     00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
                     00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
                     00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

First I tried to change the category using the mtlib command, but this does
not work:

Change Category  operation Failed, ERPA code - 6B,  Library VOLSER Misplaced.

I talked to the IBM folks and they told me to do a complete reinventory of the
library (I did this only once in my ADSM career: the library lost all
statistical information on the tapes, especially the use counts for the
cleaning cartridges). Next idea of the IBM support was to insert a dummy
cartridge with the same label and eject it afterwards to get rid of the
inventory reference. I would like to do that but I don't have the barcode
label anymore.

Has anyone an utility to print barcode (Tri-Optic) for 3590 tapes on a laser
printer?  Or better: Has anyone another idea to handle the above problem?

By the way: the library cells with volumes of category FFFA are get reused by
the the library manager, that means that two volumes point to the same cell
and that's what I worry about.

Thanks for any suggestion!

Othmar