tape drive woes

[Dave Olson]

In <9106140830.aa01622 at IBD.BRL.MIL> andy at BRL.MIL ("Ronald D. Anderson", IBD) writes:

| when the field engineer put our scsi tape drive in the top slot, he had to
| file down the button that defines the drive number (a small plastic finger
| on the rear upper part of the tape drive chassis).  seems that the tower
| chassis doesn't have quite enough room for the drive to be pushed in, and
| this little finger gets squeezed during the process.  since this button
| is a two-position (?) switch for defining the tape address, once it gets
| set to the wrong mode then the tape drive is unrecognizable to the sgi o/s.
| try removing the drive to see whether this address switch is still in the
| original mode as when you inserted it into the tower.

Sorry, but this doesn't make any sense.  The jumper blocks that set the
ID are recessed, and do not extend past then end of the drive, for all
the supported drives (some, like the 8mm drives have dip switches, but
they don't extend past the drive chassis either).

I think the plastic fingers you are talking about are simply the guide
bars; I'm surprised to hear of this, but it has NOTHING to do with
the drive ID.  (There are little tiny fingers on the switch mentioned
below, but no way could they not fit, unless someone badly bent some
sheet metal.)

Some of the newer drives shipped out do indeed have a switch on the
sheetmetal we attach to the drive, and these unfortunately can be
changed all too easily when inserting the drive, but are not in a
position where they would prevent the drive from being inserted.