11-30 Chapter 11
SCSI Peripherals and I/O Information
Self-Test - During power-on, the drive executes a self test diagnostic sequence. This is shown by both
the drive and cassette lights flashing yellow. If the self-test fails, the right Drive light shows a steady
yellow condition while the cassette light flashes yellow.
Forced Eject
There are some situations where the user's depression of the eject button may not cause a cartridge to
be ejected within an acceptable time. For instance, the media surface may be badly damaged and the
drive is having trouble recovering data. Or, the cartridge may be of poor quality and has jammed one
of its reels which prevents it from turning. In these and many similar situations, the drive will usually
invoke a series of error recovery actions in an attempt to carry out the task it was given before the eject
button was pressed. As the normal eject request is queued by the drive until it has completed any
pending operations (i.e. flushing data from the buffer to tape, writing EOD, rewinding, etc.) some
users may become frustrated at the apparent lack of response to their depression of the eject button.
For this reason, the Forced Eject feature is provided. This allows the user to request the drive to
immediately eject the cartridge regardless of any operations outstanding or error recovery actions in
progress.
Triggering a Forced Eject
The first eject button press with a tape present in the drive will always trigger a normal eject. After this
first press, the following actions by the user will trigger a forced eject:
• Two more momentary presses within five minutes of the first press, or
• Three momentary presses in any subsequent five minute period, or
• One long press where the button is held down for at least five seconds.
NOTE also that for the purposes of triggering a forced eject, a SCSI unload command may be
taken to be functionally equivalent to pressing the eject button for the first time. When
the drive is self-configuring after a power cycle or a SCSI hard reset, the eject button is
ignored for a period of about five seconds. This happens because the drive is running
kernel diagnostics and the main firmware has not yet started to run. During this time
eject button presses will not register and will not contribute towards the forced eject
trigger criteria.
Forced Eject Action
Once a forced eject has been triggered, the drive will wait for a period of approximately 35 seconds
from the time of the first press (the one that attempted to start the normal eject). Once this time-out, or
period of grace, has passed the drive will carry out a forced eject. This will cause the tape to be
immediately unthreaded and ejected regardless of any operation that the drive may be carrying out.
Once the tape has been ejected a firmware reset will be carried out as if the drive had been power
cycled.
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