RS/6000 Tape questions

[John P. Eisenmenger]

>From article <7204 at awdprime.UUCP>, by frank at leopard.austin.ibm.com:
> 1) In response to getting the 'invalid argument' when doing a tape operation:
>    This may occur when you have a tape density mismatch (just a guess). 
> The default is something like 1200. /dev/rmt0.1 writes to 600 tapes. 
> They can not write to 300 tapes.
>    Also, I think it would be worth calling in the ambiguous message
> 'invalid argument', I am not fond of it either.

The usual case for me is a blocking mismatch.  Your writes should be a
multiple of the "BLOCK size" parameter as specified in SMIT.  Anything
else will yield the "A system call has received an invalid parameter"
message.

> 2) ECC:  I believe that this has been withdrawn from support in later
> updates.  This could be why you don't see it as an option on your smit
> tape configuration menu.

Yes, I noticed that this was withdrawn in a Customer Announcement Letter.
Then again, I have yet to receive AIX 3.1.5 which was to finish shipping
last Friday -- it seems we're on the end of their list again...

-John