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From: cetron@utah-cs.UUCP (Edward J Cetron)
Newsgroups: net.decus
Subject: Re: MicroVAX II
Message-ID: <3886@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Aug-86 13:35:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.3886
Posted: Sat Aug  9 13:35:34 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Aug-86 07:39:12 EDT
References: <896@unirot.UUCP> <553@helm.UUCP>
Reply-To: cetron@utah-cs.UUCP (Edward J Cetron)
Distribution: net
Organization: Center for Engineering Design, Univ of Utah
Lines: 25
Keywords: TK-50 tape drive


	[ offering to the great line eat

	We have had no trouble at all with the 5 tk50 drives that i have
to work with.....we did have a LOT of trouble with the second batch of
tk50 cartridges....As I understand the problem:

	3M made the first large production run exactly to Digital specs...and
they worked fine...Then, in a cost cutting move, they changed the formulation
of the glue holding the leader to the tape itself...and they blew it...it
degraded and let go and gummed up the works...etc,etc...

	Well Digital was furious and forced (??) them to recall all of them..
Since we have gotten the new batches, I have not had any problems at all...

	(note: we only use them for backup and software distribution)
	(note2: also, when using backup, explicitly use as large a block
		size as possible....I have found that vms backup with a
		block size of 32000 and 5 buffers will back up a 71 meg 
		disk in about 15 minutes...)

-ed cetron
center for engineering design
univ of utah
cetron%utah-cbd@utah-cs.arpa