🚀 go-pugleaf

We recently encountered many, sometimes intermittent, problems with a TK70
tape drive on a Microvax 3600 (running VMS 4.7A ). More than 50% of the
new TK52 "CompacTape II" cartridge tapes we tried to INIT resulted in an 
error message:

" Device not in configuration or not available"   

when in fact the device MUA0: was online and available. The same error was
received about 50% of the time when attempting to BACKUP/LIST a backup
tape previously created on that drive. These tapes were new and had never
been used in a TK50 drive (which would ruin them for TK70). Finally, my
DEC Field Service guy found out through his tech. support channels that
cartridges within certain Lot numbers and ranges of Tape numbers have been
judged defective. In fact, they warn that using any of these tapes in an 
otherwise good drive can contaminate the drive and subsequently
contaminate good tapes. The Lot number is either stamped in the center
of the back of the cartridge or it is the leftmost of two
numbers stamped on the top rear of the cartridge. The defective tapes are
those within the following ranges ( letter "x" denotes wildcard
character):

LOT #		TAPE #
-----		-------
9x74x		xx5x
9x74x		xx0x
9x80x		xx09x or xx09xx
9x80x		xx10x or xx10xx
9x8xx		xx57x or xx57xx
9x8xx		xx58x or xx58xx

Leon Howorth, HHB Systems, 201-848-8000 ext. 243
UUCP: ....pyrnj!hhb!leonh