Exabyte EXB-8505 8mm Searching for Data, Copying Microcode, Inquiring About Tape Drive Status

5 Interface Specifications

Searching for Data

To enable the tape drive to perform forward or backward searches, use the SPACE (11h) or LOCATE (2Bh) commands. The tape drive moves the tape at its high-speed search speed, which is up to 75 times the nominal tape speed.

The tape drive can space over both fixed and variable blocks. The tape drive determines the type of spacing to use according to the type of block found on the tape.

Copying Microcode

Use the READ BUFFER (3Ch) and the WRITE BUFFER (3Bh) commands to copy the microcode from one tape drive to another.

First, issue a READ BUFFER command to place the microcode into the correct format and to transfer the microcode image across the SCSI bus to the initiator. Next, issue a WRITE BUFFER command to transfer the microcode from the initiator to other tape drives.

Inquiring About Tape Drive Status

To inquire about tape drive status, you can use the commands described below.

REQUEST SENSE (03h) Command

Use the REQUEST SENSE (03h) command to determine the type of error when an error occurs or to determine tape drive status. For errors, this command returns the following information:

Sense Key for the error that indicates the type of error (such as, Not Ready, Hardware Error, Illegal Request, Unit Attention, Aborted Command)

Additional Sense Code (ASC) that indicates the type of error for the given sense key

Additional Sense Code Qualifier (ASCQ) that indicates the specific error for the sense key and ASC

May 1994	EXB-8205 and EXB-8505	5-7
	(Standard and XL)