>This is really becoming annoying. I need to figure out if I have a
>hardware issue, or not !   I just got these errors, again. They seemed to
>follow th dismounting of the tape.  These are brand new tapes !

A question which immediately popped into my mind is whether you locally labeled
the tapes before starting to use them.  Never assume that "pre-labeled" tapes
are actually labeled, or labeled correctly.  Initializing tapes on your drives
and microcode levels can sometimes make a difference.

>This is a new AIX server (TSM 5.2.2.4), latest ATAPE driver, new tape
>drives/library ?   Diagnostics run clean, of course (tried FAST
>read-write, NORMAL read-write on this drive).  IBM LTO2 3580 in 3583
>library accessed via SAN/FC !

In a situation like this, isolation testing is in order.  Remove the TSM
factor by using tapeutil or similar utility to write and read back from
selected tapes and try to narrow down the problem cause.  (Relabel the
tapes after this kind of exercise.)  You may be able to establish an
isolated test case for the CE to pursue, without TSM being in the mix
for the CE to point at.

Also, new hardware does not necessarily imply the most recent firmware:
the hardware may have been installed with its factory-resident firmware -
which can be old by the time the hardware finally makes it to a customer
site - or the CE may have installed firmware from a tape which came with
the shipment, which may not be as recent as what can be downloaded from
the web.

I would not turn off TapeAlert indiscrimately: that may be like removing
the battery from that annoying smoke detector.

   Richard Sims