Hello,
  After a long battle with the standalone DLT drives, we have finally
found the problem... well, actually Steve Masters did using his trusty
SCSI Bus Analyzer.    Here's the problem:
When the drives have OFFLoaded a tape, they still must be manually ejected.
While in this state, most other SCSI commands are met with a check condition
of ASC/ASCQ 04/00, which means drive not ready.  Our device driver is smart
enough to attempt retries every 10 seconds to allow the drive to become
ready.  We currently allow 90 retries, which is 15 minutes.
We believe that the DLT drives should return Media Not Present (3A/00),
or some other similar ASC/ASCQ.  This would more accurately describe
the drive's true condition and not make us retry the operation.
We can implement an interim workaround of fewer retries for DLT drives
so that the small wait is bearable.  We do not believe this should be our
permanent solution since real errors will receive less recovery effort
than is prudent.  Therefore we will also work with the manufacturer to
see if they can implement our suggested return values.

Regards,
   Greg Bybee - ADSM Server Development
(posted by Jim Riehl)
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