6385 support withdrawn in V5R2

[neilp@xxxxxxxxxxx]

FYI

Here's IBM's reply on the 6385 support withdrawn in V5R2, reply courtesy
of Bob Worlton at IBM, and thanks to Anne Lucas for getting the speedy
reply.
Itappears that there is no longer a special announcement letter giving
upgrade discounts, but that the discount is inforporated in the feature
upgrade price when you move from a 6385/6485 to another QIC drive.

...Neil

----- Forwarded by Neil Palmer/DPS on 2002/12/27 11:33 -----

Here is the reply from the development team to another customer with
concerns over this issue

We understand the problem. Support for the #6385 was reluctantly dropped
due to technology issues. IBM announced in April 2001 that V5R1 would be
the final release to support the #6385 13GB QIC tape drive.  We recognize
that the useful lifespan of these drives was less than usual for some
customers, so we have offered the feature conversions to allow the
customer
to receive credit for some residual value for that drive.  In that same
announcement, we introduced feature conversions from the #6385 to the
16GB,
25GB, and 50GB QIC tape drives to assist our customers in the switch to
newer technology.

In April 2002 we announced V5R2, and the #6384 30GB SLR-60 tape drive.  We
also announced feature conversions from the #6385 to the #6384 so that
customers could choose the newest alternative if they hadn't already done
their upgrade.

As with all computer technologies, nothing stands still.   The quarter
inch
tape industry has moved away from the Multichannel Linear Recording (MLR)
technology to Scalable Linear Recording (SLR), and is discontinuing the
MLR
drives. In August 2002 we announced the withdrawal of the older #6383 16GB
MLR-1 and #6386 25GB MLR-3 tape drives, with an effective date of December
3, 2002.   We also announced the withdrawal of feature conversions from
the
#6385 to the #6383 and #6386 tape drives, also effective on December 3,
2002.

Bob Worlton,
Dept LJMA
iSeries Customer Satisfaction / Quality/ Data Mining



----- Forwarded by Neil Palmer/DPS on 2002/12/26 22:05 -----

    Larry Bolhuis <lbolhuis@arbsol.com>
    Sent by:                                     To:
    midrange-l-admin@midrange.com        midrange-l@midrange.com
                                                 cc:
                                                 Subject:        Re: QIC
    2002/12/26 14:26                     Tape 'Survey'
    Please respond to midrange-l





Neil,

  I cannot contradict your statement about maintenance in the field,
however,
IMHO IBM's action is not a solution to the problem. They have dropped
SOFTWARE
support for a drive with HARDWARE problems. Maintenance is still supported
so
they haven't helped themselves at all.

  You may be right about the replacement option but I never saw it and
clearly those deals must be gone as the 6383 is also no longer available.
As
for dropping sales of it, no problem - the 16G unit WAS an obvious
replacement. However there have been many (dozens?) of QIC drives dropped
from
marketing but this is the *ONLY one that I am aware of that has been
dropped
from the list of supported drives.

neilp@dpslink.com wrote:
> The 6385 has been trouble since it was first introduced.  Tried to be
too
> backward compatible and it bit them in the ***.   VERY high replacement
> record out in the field for the 6385, so I guess they decided it was
best
> to dump it.  It may have been unfairly criticized in some cases because
as
> it was so backward compatible and could write QIC120 tapes, a lot of
> customers apparently continued to use older tapes on a regular basis,
> which were very abrasive to the newer tape heads.  IBM annouced it's
> withdrawal from marketing sometime in 2000 I believe, and it was stated
> over a year ago that it would no be supported following V5R1.  There
were
> special upgrade deals announced last year to replace the 6385 with a
newer
> QIC model (probably the 6383) but I don't know if they are still in
place.
>
> ...Neil


--
Larry Bolhuis           | IBM Certified Solutions Expert
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