RE: The dreaded 3570 tape drive rears its ugly head once again

        I found two operator's guides for the 3570.

C Series:
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S7000250&aid=1
B Series:
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S7000249&aid=1

Guy Murphy
murphyfa@xxxxxxxx
University of Illinois Foundation 
217-333-8670
http://www.heisercoaching.com

-----Original Message-----

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