Chapter 11 11-39
SCSI Peripherals and I/O Information
Figure 11-15 A3183A Indicator Descriptions
Cartridge Light - Flashes green to show activity, loading, unloading, reading, and writing. It shows
steady green to indicate a cartridge is loaded and the unit is ready.
Clean/Attention Light - Flashes Amber to indicate head cleaning is needed. This is an indication of
an excessive number of Read-After-Write (RAW) or third level error correction (C3 ECC) errors. This
condition can be caused by dirty heads or by a cartridge approaching the end of its life. If the flashing
light reoccurs after the initial cleaning, the data cartridge involved should be removed from use by
reading the data from the tape and copying that data to a new tape. The cleaning needed indication is
only cleared by completing a cleaning cycle, no matter what the cause is, however, the indication does
not stop the activity of the tape unit.
Self-Test - During power-on, the drive executes a self test diagnostic sequence. This is shown by the
left tape /cartridge light flashing green at a rate of one cycle per second. If the self-test fails, the right
clean/attention light shows a steady amber condition.
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 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.
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