On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:37:38AM -0400, Ron Benton wrote:
> I'd like to be able to list the contents of the CM chip in LTO (LTO2, in 
> my case) cartridges. Since the interface to this chip is an industry 
> standard that has been around a long time, I can't believe nobody has 
> written software to read it when the cartridge is loaded in a drive.

I have not seen anything that suggests the drive will give you raw
access to the data.  So this may not be possible.  Certainly it can read
the chip (and act upon it), but I don't think you can query it directly.

As an example, here's a doc to the SCSI Reference manual of IBM LTO
drives.  I took a quick look and I didn't see any operations that would
display the CM data directly.  If it's in there, writing a tool to do so
shouldn't be too hard.

http://publibfi.boulder.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/a3204509.pdf

> I know that some hardware diagnostic tools are able to access it, and
> I have found evidence that there is an RF scanner serial terminal that
> connects to a PC serial interface that can read the chip when out of
> the drive, but I haven't been able to find out where to get one.

I've seen the seated readers for $1000 to $2000 US, and even then
software interprets the information.  Having not used it, I don't know
if it will display the raw data on the chip.  Those are readily
available.  I've seen images of a smaller scanner, but I don't see them
for sale (or know exactly what it's called).

-- 
Darren

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