[Info-vax] Replacement of SCSI tape drives and loaders

[Syltrem]

"Kari Uusimäki" <uusimaki at exdecWITHOUTTHISfinland.org> wrote in message 
news:4b58aff3$0$26371$9b536df3 at news.fv.fi...
> On 21.1.2010 21:11, Syltrem wrote:
>
> Yes, you can do it live, when you keep in mind some basic, but very 
> important things.
> First, do not connect or disconnect peripherals when they are switched on. 
> Do always switch them off before making any changes. Preferably disconnect 
> the power cord also.
> Second, you have to mind about the SCSI addresses to be sure you don't 
> have two devices with same address. That will really produce unpredictable 
> behaviour.
> Third, it is good to update the I/O structures when you have disconnected 
> the old peripherals and connected the new ones, but before you switch the 
> new ones on, by issuing the command
> $ MC SYSMAN IO AUTO /LOG
> The old peripherals should turn from online to offline.
> Then switch the new ones on and do once more
> $ MC SYSMAN IO AUTO /LOG
> Now the new peripherals should appear in the device list.

I I used the same SCSI ID, I would just see the device going from online to 
offline, then to online again. Riight ?
And it's safe to keep the same SCSI address (if I can do that then I won't 
be left with a non-existing device showing up on VMS)

> The speed of the drive should be correct at once if your version of 
> OpenVMS recognizes it correctly (i.e. the VMS version is new enough).
> There might be a faint possibility that someone would have fiddled with 
> the SCSI adapter settings which would cause the bus not to work with full 
> speed. But you'll find that out when you test the drive.
> One thing you probably need to do is to generate the robotics control 
> device on the machine where you connect the tape library.

The GKxu device will not get created automatically with the SYSMAN IO AUTO ?

> You can do that live also. You need th know the bus ID and the SCSI ID of 
> the robotics controller. Lets say it is SCSI ID 1 on the third SCSI bus 
> (C)

Right now the robot is GKA0 and the drives are MKA400 and MKA500:
Isn't the robot always 0 ? I thought this was how it worked. Or maybe it's 
just because it was assigned SCSI id 0 at install time. I have 2 and both 
are on ID 0, but on different buses (GKA0 and GKB0)

> $ MC SYSMAN IO CONNECT GKC100: /NOADAPTER /DRIVER=SYS$GKDRIVER
> Then you should have a device named GKC100: which is the one you need to 
> access the robotics. Most probably you need to update your backup 
> application or procedure to include the robotics device name.
> If you have the MRU utility installed, you can test the robotics functions 
> manually
> (e.g. $ robot show robot)
>
>
> Good luck!
>
> Kari
>

Thanks for all the details.
This will help a lot !
Syltrem