> On my SDX-500 AIT-2 drives, I have 1-7 off and 8 on.  The 
> documentation
> says switches 1-4 & 6 are reserved and should be off, 5 is termination
> power, 7 is HW compression (0-off,1-on), and 8 is SW 
> compression control
> (0 lets host enable/disable compression, 1 disables host control).  I
> think the default is 0-6 off, 7 on , 8 off.  The manual says it is
> capable of either fixed or variable block sizes, it doesn't mention
> anything about enabling/disabling it in hardware; it should be up to
> the driver.

Thanks for the detailed info about the dip switches.  My manual lists all but 
DIP #7 as reserved.


> > 3) Has anyone else using an AIT tape drive had similar problems?
> 
> Not me.
> 
> Did this problem recently start or have you never used it before?
> Are the tapes new or old?
> What is the exact error you're getting?
> Can you tar or dump directly to and from the tape without errors?
> OS and version?

This problem existed ever since I tried to do my first resetore from tape.  All 
of the tapes are less than 4 months old.

I receive 2 error messages.  When using amrecover, I receive an error message 
to stdout as follows:

Extracting files using tape drive /dev/nst0 on host bender.
Load tape BACKUP-22 now
Continue [?/Y/n/s/t]? y

<snip as restore begins>

./r50/bin/MSFD_UTILITY.EXE
./r50/bin/PDM_SIMULATION_APPLICATION.EXE
./r50/bin/PGS_CRITERIA_VALIDATOR_DRIVER.EXE
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
extract_list - child returned non-zero status: 2
Continue [?/Y/n/r]? y
amrecover> exit
200 Good bye.



The other message occurs in /tmp/amanda/amidxtaped debug file:

amrestore:   8: restoring bender._rfss_ceesim_8k_lib-r50s.20040326.0
 
gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--crc error
 
gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--length error
amrestore:   9: reached end of information
amidxtaped: time 294.174: amrestore terminated normally with status: 1
amidxtaped: time 294.174: rewinding tape ...
amidxtaped: time 341.208: done
amidxtaped: time 341.208: pid 25238 finish time Tue Apr  6 10:26:33 2004


-Rob