[HECnet] Tape drive explosion

[Mark Benson]

On 26 Jan 2013, at 06:29, Ian McLaughlin wrote:

Does anyone have the document EK-TZ875-OM in their digital collections anywhere?   I am unable to find it anywhere, and I'm trying to decypher the front panel controls for this device.

I had a good search, I found everything but the user manual. Is there any chance of removing the tape drive deck from it? I thing the TZ875 (from the pictures) just has 5 drives in a 4U box at the back. It might be faster to extract a drive from it and use that! If you do it carefully you can put it back afterwards. :)

I can read and write DLTIII tapes without a problem.   Reading TK50 tapes seems to work, but I'm getting random garbage.   There appears to be a method to override the density on the front panel, but I can't quite figure it out.

The individual drives have 2 buttons, one unloads the cartridge, the other selects the density of the media manually. Obviously, on a jukebox this will all be connected to a micro-controller that does it via the panel, which you don't have am manual for. If it were me I'd just futz with the panel (with no tapes in) and see if there was a density override option but I'm *guessing* you tried that.


-- 

Mark Benson

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