Help! I'm on my third strike in my ongoing quest to replace our older,
smaller capacity Tandberg tape drive. First I purchased an Exabyte 4mm
drive, which turned out to be malfunctioning and was returned. My
second strike was buying an Exabyte 8205 8mm drive, which also turned
out to be a malfunctioning drive. I replaced that with another 8205
which seems to work fine....however...

My latest problem is this: Installing the 8205 on a fresh installation
of Pick it works great, backs up, restores, no problems. However, on
attempting to install it on a copy of our production system, the
scsi.menu program gives the following error when trying to install the
tape driver: "illegal opcode abort @ lk.group.unlk.all:073". We used
drivers from SCSI Connection (option 5 on the boot-up tap drive list)
for our older Tandberg tape drive, and I suspect that installing those
drivers changed something that the Kraft drivers (option 3) need to
load the Exabyte.

I'm pretty new at this and am just going by trial and error for the
most part. I've tried re-installing ABS to no avail, so I don't think
the problem is there. I'm leaning towards something in the BP file but
after quite a bit of experimentation and messing things up and having
to re-install things, I'm pretty much ready to pitch the whole thing.

I'd be VERY grateful if anybody has any ideas. I've gotten some great
help on these boards before so I'm hoping someone will come through
again.

Thanks!

Zumasys purchased SCSI Connection a couple of years ago. Contact Zumasys
technical support @ 949-334-0287. You may end up with Tom McTeer, the guy
who wrote the tape drivers. Their rates are reasonable.

<briangateley (AT) tds (DOT) net> wrote

Yes, Zumasys is your best bet. If and when you get your problem
resolved, you really really should consider upgrading to D3 or
migrating to another MV platform. Advanced Pick is no longer
supported. People who developed and supported it don't remember
what's in it or have moved on to the great beyond. It's really time
to do something before your programs and data (and maybe your job) are
lost forever.

AP has been obsolete for many years now and my encouragement for
migration has been increasingly more serious. Perhaps you should
google for the cries of help and despair in this forum from other AP
and R83 users who have been suddenly caught with no means of recovery.

Good luck in any case.
Tony


"Jeffrey Kaufman" <jkaufman (AT) keydata (DOT) us> wrote:

Thanks for your help, Jeff & Tony. I've contacted Zumasys and we're
working on it...hopefully I can get it going finally. Tony, I'd love
to upgrade to D3 or something, got $20,000 I can borrow? :-)

briangateley (AT) tds (DOT) net wrote:
I understand the situation, but just think what it will cost if that
system dies a bloody death - it's happened to others. Might be good
to present the options to the company management and let them decide
which is the lesser of the evils. If you'd like to discuss migration
to D3, please feel free to e-mail. If you would like a competitive
bid for a nice new jBASE system, feel free to ask about that too, my
company is now a Distributor for jBASE and related products. I just
want to see end-user sites like yours happy and running smoothly, I
don't care what platform you're running on.

Regards,
Tony
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD .com

Tony,

Since tape is really the only way to get data off AP/Pro, other than file to
file transfers, they have to get the tape drive working in order to upgrade.
One way or the other, the tape drive has to be functional. I went through
this with a couple of my customers.

Jeff

"Tony Gravagno" <g6q3x9lu53001 (AT) sneakemail (DOT) com.invalid> wrote

Jeff,

Not really totally true.

AP/Pro came with PicLan. You could transfer data via the network.

I know. I've done it.

Larry Hazel

"Jeffrey Kaufman" <jkaufman (AT) keydata (DOT) us> wrote

I know exactly what you're saying and I totally agree. Unfortunately,
every time I bring it up to the owner, along with dire warnings of the
possible consequences if we DON'T upgrade...all I get is "maybe next
spring...", or "not after the lousy month we just had", etc. I'm kind
of assuming the worst will happen eventually and at that point he'll
HAVE to upgrade...pity it will probably cost him twice as much to do it
at that point, but what can I do?

Do you have any first-hand stories of companies that this happened to?
Maybe if I could show him in black and white what could happen, he'd
re-think his position.

Thanks,
Brian

Larry,
We don't have PicLan installed, although I did come across the disks
for it when I started messing with this tape drive. Is it a major pain
to install it? Would it work with a Windows XP local network? Could I
use it to backup the system?

Thanks for any help you could give me,
Brian

Goo'day,

On 21 Nov 2005 07:02:09 -0800, briangateley (AT) tds (DOT) net wrote:

When we were in much the same situation, the contemplation of PicLan
was overshadowed by the use of AccuTerm........ IMHO much easier to
install, get running, et al...


HTH
Regards,

Bruce Nichol
Talon Computer Services
ALBURY NSW Australia

http://www.taloncs.com.au

If it ain't broke, fix it until it is....