Warning about EXB-8500 5GByte tape drive.

[System Administrator]

This may have been covered before, but if so I missed it...

                          WARNING!

We have just purchased one of the new EXB-8500 tape drives. These are the
5 GByte version of the EXABYTE tape drives. The drive itself seems to work
fine. It can read and write with no problems, and so far the tapes seem
quite reliable.

The problem is that both the advertising and the manual claim that this
drive can read EXB-8200 format tapes (2.3GByte tapes). IT CANNOT!

When we tried to read a 2.3G tape, we could get no more than an error
about reaching the physical end of the tape too soon. The drive would then
go off-line and not even the eject button would work.

After verifying the tape was alright, we hounded our suppliers until they
chased EXABYTE who sent back the message that there would be a firmware
patch in four to six weeks that should fix the problem.

Our suppliers estimate that we should only have to spend around $AU150
($US~120) for the upgrade (ie to get our drive into the state it was
supposed to be in when we bought it!)

If you are contemplating purchasing an EXB-8500 make sure it has has the
firmware upgrade they talk about (you might have to wait).

John Baird                              ACSnet: john at toshiba.tic.oz.AU
Toshiba International Corporation       Phone:  02-428-2077      
Sydney                                  Fax:    02-427-7405