write retries exceeded with tc7000 & cipher M990

[Arthur David Olson]

> I have a Vax 11/780 running 4.3BSD with an Emulex TC13 controller
> (emulating a ts-11) connected to a Fuji-2444AC tape drive.
> 
> Everything works fine except. . .Emulex swears that if the driver sets the
> right bit. . .(It's always a driver problem to them.)
>
> Has anyone tried to do a software density select with an Emulex TC13?

Me, I have a VAX 11/750 running MORE/bsd 4.3 with an Emulex TC7000 controller
(emulating a tm03/tu77) connected to a Cipher M990 tape drive.

Everything works fine except when a bad tapes causes a "write retries exceeded"
error on the Cipher drive.  It seems as if in such cases there's no interrupt
getting back to the VAX to tell it there's a problem and that the write should
be aborted.  Even after we clear the error on the drive itself (by unloading
and reloading the tape) we don't get an interrupt--and since the 4.3BSD driver
is very patient about waiting for one (read:  it will wait forever), the only
way to make the drive useable again is to reboot.

And I'm so low on Emulex's list that they don't even swear at me--
my calls to the technical types have simply gone unreturned all week.

Has anyone solved the write retries problem with the TC7000/M990 combination?

P.S.:  Software density select works just fine with the TC7000.  :-)
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