Tape terror

[Rich Braun]

ken at dillman.austin.vnet.ibm.com () writes:
>Try changing the automatic retension feature of the tape drive to off
>using SMIT.  That should save you a great deal of time every time you
>load a new tape.

Thanks for posting this.  I got several e-mail replies suggesting the
same thing.

A question for IBM:  why _in the world_ would a company put out a product
which by default would do such a thing?  It really makes the system seem
cruddy and slow.  To the uninitiated (myself, for example), it may not
be all that obvious that one should go into the SMIT menu and change a
simple, relatively unexplained parameter.  After all, it's very easy to
screw the system up by changing parameters one does not understand; my
inclination is to leave things well enough alone if they aren't broken.

This truly amazes me.

-rich