[Info-vax] TLZ7

[Michael Kraemer]

In article <0b61ed08-4080-42bb-900d-6c266674b667 at g13g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>,
AEF <spamsink2001 at yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> I strongly recommend to NOT use DDS-2 tapes on a TLZ07. (BTW, mine
> don't look anything like yours.) I had endless trouble reading DDS-2
> tapes on these drives. They'd either get the parity error part way
> through the tape, or not read at all. This is usually when you try to
> read the tape on a different drive.
> 
> Use DDS-1. Once I started using that, everything worked as it should.
> 
> Of course it may be something about MY TLZ07s. 

I'd say so. My TLZ07 is one of the most stable DDS-drives
I ever owned (and I got it even used, not new).
It takes both, DDS-1 and DDS-2 w/o problems.
It could even boot OSF/1 (Mips !) on a DECstation,
which normally is a rather picky hardware.

> Don't know. (Not DEC,
> but we had HP maintenance on them, and some of the drive they sent as
> substitutes were no better! On spit out a tape onto the floor. (I am
> not making this up.) A tiny screw fell out of another (after I heard
> it rattling when carrying the drive).

That's not unusual. DDS drives often are crappy, don't know why.
The number of dead drives I threw into the trashcan by far outnumbers
the bad media I had trashed so far (not counting the media
destroyed by crappy drives).
I don't know if DEC made their own drives, maybe they're just rebranded
one's (from HP, Seagate, Archive or such like).