Loading Tape Drives

Your computer room may be equipped with various kinds of tape drives. In this section, you will find information on how to load and unload three different tape drives:

Manual tape drives.
Automatic tape drives.
Digital data storage (DDS) tape drive.

If this section does not cover information for your tape drive, check your hardware documentation.

To load a manual tape drive

Select a tape. If you want to write data to your tape, insert a write-enable ring . If you only want to read data, leave the write-enable ring off.
Open the door of the tape drive.
Unlatch and remove the plastic band that wraps around the reel.

You will see two hubs on the tape drive, one without a reel and one containing an empty, permanently fixed reel.
If the spool without a reel has a latch, flip the latch up.
Mount the reel onto the empty spool.
Close the locking lever.
Thread the tape along the tape path and onto the permanently fixed reel. Ensure that the tape is secured by winding it on the permanently fixed reel about three rotations.
Close the door.
Press the LOAD button.
When the tape stops loading, press the ONLINE button.

To load an automatic tape drive

Select a tape. If you want to write data to your tape insert a write-enable ring. If you only want to read data, leave the write-enable ring off.
Press the UNLOAD button to open the tape drive door.
Unlatch and remove the plastic band on the tape.
Slide the tape into the center of the tape door opening.
Close the door.
Press the ONLINE button.
When the ONLINE indicator light stays on, reply to the tape request message at the console.
1. At the console, log on as OPERATOR.SYS. .
2. At the ":" prompt, enter:
  REPLY nn,m Return
The nn is the process identification number (PIN) and m is the logical device number (LDEV).

To load a DDS tape drive

What is a DDS tape drive ? It is a tape drive that stores data on cassette tapes in a format called digital data storage.

To load a digital data storage (DDS) tape drive:

Insert a tape cassette squarely (not at an angle) into the slot in the front of the drive. Make sure that the label is facing uppermost, then follow the arrowhead on the cassette case. Only minimum force is necessary when doing this. Do not restrain the cassette when pushing it into the drive because it could cause it to jam in the mechanism. The drive will automatically eject an incorrectly loaded cassette after 10 seconds.
Using single-finger pressure on the rear of the cassette tape will allow the autoloading mechanism to take the cassette and load it into the drive. The loading sequence takes about 25 seconds.
When the load sequence is finished, the cassette light (upper) remains lit a steady green if the cassette is write-enabled, or yellow if the cassette is write-protected. The drive light (lower) goes out until the host computer accesses the drive.

To allow a DDS tape to be written on

If you want to allow a cassette tape to be written to, as well as read from, you can place the tape in read/write mode.

To place a DDS cassette in read/write mode, slide the tab on the rear edge of the cassette so that the recognition hole is closed.

To protect data on a DDS tape

If you want to protect the data on a cassette from being altered or overwritten, you can write-protect the cassette.

Slide the tab on the right rear edge of the cassette so that the recognition hole is open, as shown below.

To unload a manual tape drive

When your tape stops moving and the tape drive displays OFFLINE, press the REWIND button.
After the reel stops spinning, open the tape drive door.
Remove the reel tape from the tape drive.
If you have been writing to tape, take off the write-enable ring.
Put the plastic band on and latch it.
Close the tape drive door.

To unload an automatic tape drive

Press the ONLINE button to take the drive offline. The ONLINE light is on when the system is online.
Press the REWIND button to rewind the tape back onto the supply reel.
Press the UNLOAD button.

At this point, the drive unloads the tape and opens the door.
Remove your tape.
Remove the write-enable ring, if you have been writing to tape.
Put the plastic band on and latch it.
Close the door to the tape drive.

To unload a DDS tape drive

Press the UNLOAD button (front panel).

This starts a sequence that rewinds the tape to the beginning and ejects the cassette. The sequence takes about 10 seconds.
During the unload sequence, both front panel lights pulse green (yellow, if the tape is write-protected).
Remove the tape.