HP 7970E tape drive woes

From: Jay West <west_at_tseinc.com>
Date: Tue Jul 3 01:55:39 2001

Greetings and a question for the list....

My HP7970E tape drive is *sick* (plus I just blew the 30v supply in my
HP2100A, but that's a whole other story about me and Murphy's Laws on
getting HP2000 Access up and running). Do others find that resurrecting
these old systems causes a propensity to drink excessively? *GRIN*

On to the question... The 7970E passes all the mechanical tests via the
switches internal to the unit (tape speeds & motion basically). It fails the
read/write test portion of the diagnostics (but does pass interrupt/DMA
tests so I suspect the interface boards are ok). Is anyone particularly
familiar with these beasts and can suggest a course of action? I have all
the "theory of operation" and "maintenance" manuals (as well as schematics),
but they are two 4 inch thick manuals and a lot of it is way over my head.
Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction to at least get me
started - or better yet, anyone have a 7970E up and running that would be
willing to loan me some boards to test mine via boardswapping??

Thanks for any info (or condolences & empathy) anyone can provide!

Jay West
Received on Tue Jul 03 2001 - 01:55:39 BST