Triggering A Forced Eject - HP 9000 Series Service Manual

SCSI Peripherals and I/O Information

Triggering a Forced Eject

The first eject button press with a tape present in the drive will always trigger a normal eject. After this
first press, the following actions by the user will trigger a forced eject:
o Two more momentary presses within 5 minutes of the first press, or
o Three momentary presses in any subsequent 5 minute period, or
o One long press where the button is held down for at least 5 seconds.
Note also that for the purposes of triggering a forced eject, a SCSI unload command may be taken
to be functionally equivalent to pressing the eject button for the first time. When the drive is
self-configuring after a power cycle or a SCSI had reset, the eject button is ignored for a period of
about five seconds. This happens because the drive is running kernel diagnostics and the main
firmware has not yet started to run. During this time eject button presses will not register and will
not contribute towards the forced eject trigger criteria.
Forced Eject Action
Once a forced eject has been triggered, the drive will wait for a period of approximately 35 seconds
from the time of the first press (the one that attempted to start the normal eject). Once this time-out, or
period of grace, has passed the drive will carry out a forced eject. This will cause the tape to be
immediately unthreaded and ejected regardless of any operation that the drive may be carrying out.
Once the tape has been ejected a firmware reset will be carried out as if the drive had been power
cycled.
Consequences of a Forced Eject
The drive can be doing literally any action at the time a forced eject is carried out. There is a
possibility that during a write, data may be lost and an invalid format tape could be created (as EOD
may not be written correctly). It is for this reason that the drive allows itself the 35 second grace
period in which to attempt a normal eject. If the normal eject succeeds within the 35 second period,
then any pending forced eject will be cancelled.
Beware also that as the firmware is fully reset at the end of the forced eject sequence, the drive will
re-instate its default setup and will lose any special features that may have been enabled using a prior
mode select command. The drives internal trace logs will also be cleared. A forced eject will also
override any Prevent Medium Removal status that may have been previously setup by the host system.
The forced eject feature is factory configured and cannot be defeated.
Manual Cartridge Removal
If a tape cartridge becomes jammed in the tape drive, it can be extracted by performing the following
steps:
NOTE Read these instructions fully before starting the procedure.
1. Remove the tape drive from the SPU cabinet. Refer to the Peripheral Bay removal procedure in
Chapter 7.
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