Tape terror

[Rich Braun]

My 3.1.5 upgrade came yesterday, and it took forever to install.  IBM's
two-page instruction guide fails to tell you when you can take extended
coffee breaks during the procedure, so I had to baby-sit the thing for
about three hours.  (It also fails to be explicit about avoiding such
things as specifying device /dev/rmt0, which causes a lengthy tape read
followed by a cryptic error message which doesn't explain that one
just screwed up and should have typed /dev/rmt0.1.  Ugh.)

Anyway, I'm wondering if I should call up IBM service or just live with
my slow tape drive.  The model number shown on the front is 7207-001,
and the problem is that it takes about 5 minutes to load a tape even if
the tape was already rewound.  The little green light comes on and
the tape spins for this long before one can access the tape (indicated
when the light finally goes out and the grinding--er, whirring--noise stops).
Once the unit gets going, it can back up a good-sized filesystem in a
reasonable amount of time, but the rewind and mount operations are far
slower than equivalent 150-Mb cartridge units on my other systems.

I miss the old TU-72 units from DEC, which had nice big windows through
which one could see exactly what was going on.  (I don't miss the 40,000-
tape archive room at the U. of Delaware, which was filled with bulky
9-track tapes...)

Shall I call IBM service to get this thing fixed, or shall I call IBM
sales to get this thing scrapped?

-rich