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Exabyte Tape Drive LED's

The front panel of MiniDAQ's Exabyte tape drive includes an amber LED; this flashes each time a 32,768-byte data block is written to the drive. If the system is hung, record the state of this LED (on, off, blinking, etc.); note whether or not taping was enabled.

The flash frequency varies from occasional (for zero-suppressed, cosmic-ray data) to nearly continuous (for raw pedestal data). In the latter case, the tape-remaining counter will be noticeably decreasing (it shows 4585 for a new 5-GB tape).

One is checking for two things:

  1. The amber write light may stay on steadily, without tape movement and without the LED flickering. In this case, the Exabyte drive itself has hung--perhaps due to a SCSI terminator or cable problem.
  2. The amber write light may never flash at all if the run is hung. (Of course, if taping is not enabled, the LED will never flash in any case.)


Written: 09-JUL-1997 by Roy Bossingham
Last Modified:


Page maintenance:

Roy Bossingham, LBNL
RRBossingham@lbl.gov