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Path: elsie!ado
From: ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: write retries exceeded with tc7000 & cipher M990--what does VMS do?
Message-ID: <7358@elsie.UUCP>
Date: 12 Mar 87 21:20:53 GMT
References: <43125@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <7351@elsie.UUCP>
Organization: NIH-LEC, Bethesda, MD
Lines: 19

> . . .I have a VAX 11/750 running MORE/bsd 4.3 with an Emulex TC7000 controller
> (emulating a tm03/tu77) connected to a Cipher M990 tape drive.
> Everything works fine except when a bad tape causes a "write retries exceeded"
> error on the Cipher drive.  It seems as if in such cases there's no interrupt
> getting back to the VAX to tell it there's a problem and that the write should
> be aborted. . .

I talked with a technical type on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Emulex person thinks it might be a (drum roll please) driver problem.

The theory is that VMS does the "right" thing--timing out if there's no response
from the drive after a decent interval.  If anyone knows whether this theory
is true, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

(But hey--the person at Emulex who's the authority on the TC7000 is said to be
out until March 23 getting some training, so the story may change soon.)
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