The dreaded 3570 tape drive rears its ugly head once again

Greetings,

For starters, can anyone provide a link to me to a manual for a 3570 tape
drive?  We've got the tape drive but I can't find a manual for it.  From
what I've read in the archives people don't seem to be shouting praises
about it from the rooftops and I'm starting to grumble myself.  Our 3570
seems to be experiencing a fair number of media errors lately and I want to
know if needs service or if it's a maintenance issue on our part.  These
media errors are happening on the nightly backups for both our 720 which
uses half of the drive and our 270 that uses the other half.  I've been
told that there is a cleaning cartridge in it.  Until now it was my
understanding that it automatically cleaned the drive but I never bothered
to research when it did this.  This morning I've read in the archives that
you can set up "cleaning schedules".  Until now I've never noticed that
there was an option for this on the drive but then again, I'm not the
person who normally swaps tapes, initializes them, etc.

I also don't know how long the cleaning cartridge was good for.  I've
worked here almost two years and don't recall that it has ever been
replaced.  I've always thought cleaning tapes for single-cartridge drives
were good for about 15-20 cleanings before they needed to be replaced.

Any thoughts or advice?  Thanks.

Dave Parnin
Nishikawa Standard Company
Topeka, IN  46571
daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx