🚀 go-pugleaf

I was recently given a TS11 tape drive for the price of pickup, and 
have been having problems trying to operate it.

Now, in my usual rambling mode I use whenever I post:

A bit of background. The drive was a tad to big to fit in the door to 
my basement, so I removed as much from the frame as I could before we
attempted to move it. This included removing the tape transport, the
drive controller, and various odds and ends. There wasnt really that 
many wires to disconnect, and all of them were obvious to where they
hook up. I got it into the house, and put back together in no time.

I wired it up to my VAX 730 (the deal included the TS11 Unibuss controller),
but when I first hooked it up, I got the ribbon wire between the drive and
the VAX reversed. The 'density error' light was glowing, and the drive
was inoperational. I flipped the cable over, and its mildly ok now.
I can load a tape, and do some small operations on it (mount, init)
but when I do things like backup or init/erase, it really flips out
on me. The tape will spin for a few feet, and suddenly release itself.
I suspect the cause of that to be the tape leading arms (they swing
in to far, and it releases the motors).

This happens all the time. I tried init/era msa0: backup, and it did
a few token movements, and released itself, and basiclly locked up
the console. Doing a backup results in different happenings. Itll
spin for a few feet, and report back that it cant position the save
set name, or that the device has timed out on me.

Ive never used a TS11 tape drive before, but really, how hard is it
to operate a tape drive? I thread the tape, and have to back it up a
few inches for the arms to tighten up, and press LOAD and the bugger
loads, and goes online. VMS knows how to deal with this drive, so
thats not the difficulty.

Some more things. There are a few switches on the back of the tape 
drive controller (the one inside the drive itself). They are labeled
'maint', 'ovr', and 'halt'. Of couse, the drive has to be OUT of 
maint mode for it to work, and same goes for halt, but what does 
this switch 'ovr' do?

The person who gave this to me (who shall also remain nameless) was
basiclly an unhelpful person. Gave me the drive and pretty much said
'have fun'.                     

So, after all my psycobabble, is this an operator error or a device
fault? In either case, I think I shall start looking for a TU80 
to replace this TS11

Thanx for any possible help anyone can give me.

Billy D'Augustine
Azog-Thoth@cup.portal.com