Why can't I boot tape on 3B2/600?

[Steve Friedl]

In article <498 at mtndew.Tustin.CA.US>, I write:
> I have been having the damndest time getting a customer
> machine back up after a crash this weekend, and I am baffled as
> to why it is not cooperating with me.

Hi folks,

     A few days ago I posted this request for help trying to find
out why a 3B2/600 would not boot.  I have fixed the problem and
want to relay the things I learned.

     First, I hadn't known that the /filledt command on the
Essential Utilities disks would not work on a 3B2/600 and will
usually cause the machine to power off (bummer).  The 3B2/400 is
a version 2 machine, and their filledt programs are not equipped
to handle the version 3 motherboards found on the /600.  The
filledt on the idtools disk (which I had at home) will work on
all the machines.

     Second, the problem ended up being a bad tape drive
(surprise!).  After AT&T replaced the drive, however, we could no
longer completely read either of our last two backups.  We were
in the middle of a repartition operation when the machine went
down, so this was A Very Big Deal.  The biggest bummer is that
the bad spot on the main backups was in a 22MB file that was at
the very end of the first tape.

     I took the tapes to my home and office machines and was
never able to get everything off the tapes.  I found that
jiggling the tape in the drive would sometimes get past a bad
spot here and there, but I could never get everything.

     What saved me was the AT&T Realtime Cartridge Tape
Adjustment and Alignment Tool.  To the untrained eye, this looks
*exactly* like a pocket RS-232 screwdriver, and in fact you can
convert a screwdriver to an adjustment tool just by calling it
one :-)

    It turns out that wedging the screwdriver -- er, alignment
tool -- between the top of the cartridge tape and the bottom of
the upper end of the slot "misaligned" the tape enough that we
were able to read all four tapes without a single bad spot.  My
customer suffered through two days of machine downtime, but we
didn't lose any data and I ended up the tired hero.

     I want to thank the many people who wrote in with information,
including the swell guy from AT&T (Doug Barnes?) who called me at
5:30 Monday morning before I went down to my customer.  I hope I'm
not missing anybody.

	Iain Bason
	M. Kosmin, LSI Communications
	Dave Bodenstab
	Doug Barnes AT&T DSG
	Janice L. Schlueter
	Kevin Darcy, Chrysler Financial
	Tom Toeller, AT&T DSG

     My customer and I thank you all.

     Steve

-- 
Stephen J. Friedl, KA8CMY / Software Consultant / Tustin, CA / 3B2-kind-of-guy
+1 714 544 6561  / friedl at mtndew.Tustin.CA.US  / {uunet,attmail}!mtndew!friedl

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