SCSI Toolbox :: Newsletter - September 2007
IN THIS EDITION
SCSItoolbox Suite 7.0.0 Promotional offer valid through end of September only!
Did you know... Temperature is important?
Coming Soon - USB and 1394 FireWire support!
Ask Dr. SCSI - "... the MoveMedia command requires the addresses of the cell and the tape drive. How do I get these addresses?"
Did You Know ...that you have a Bus Analyzer?
SCSItoolbox Suite 7.0.0 Promotional offer valid through end of September only!
Don't let the 7.0.0 promotional offer pass you by. The 7.0.0 promotional offer is only valid for a few more days. If you've been thinking about acting on the offer - Now is the time! Until September 28th you can purchase a Full SCSItoolbox Suite for 1/2 price! Yes, that's the Full SCSItoolbox Suite for $2,247.50!
http://www.scsitoolbox.com/offers/STBv7PromotionalOffer.html
Did you know... Temperature is important?
That temperature is a very important factor in disk drive reliability? You can see the current temperature of a drive by right-clicking on the drive in the Device Menu, then choosing View Log Pages.
Then simply double-click on the Page 0D – Temperature Page choice to view the current temperature. Keep those drives cool while testing!
Coming Soon - USB and 1394 FireWire support!
Here is a screenshot of the next update to BAM under construction – full capture support for USB and 1394 FireWire storage devices!
Here is a trace capture showing Windows housekeeping commands issued to a USB disk drive and a 1394 tape drive:
In addition to BAM, all other components of the STB Suite will support USB and 1394 soon – be sure to keep your Performa coverage current so you will have access to these and other new features being added to the STB Suite.
Ask Dr. SCSI - MoveMedia command?
Q. “When I want to use the MoveMedia command to move a tape cartridge from a cell to a tape drive in my Jukebox, the MoveMedia command requires the addresses of the cell and the tape drive. How do I get these addresses?"
A. The Jukebox has a unique address for each of the components in the Jukebox. These components are the media changer (i.e. the mechanical "arm" that physically moves cartridges from one spot to another), the mail slots ("doors" that open up from the Jukebox so you can insert a new cartridge or retrieve a cartridge), storage cells (slots for the tape cartridges), and the tape drives. To get the address of any of these components you use the "Read Element Status" command - this command is issued to the Jukebox itself. As an example to get the addresses of all the tape drives in the Jukebox you would issue the CDB
B8 04 00 00 00 80 00 00 28 00 00 00
In Byte #1 of the CDB you see the number 04 - this is the code that tells the Jukebox "return information on the tape drives". Here are the other codes: 00 (all components), 01 (media changers), 02 (storage cells), and 03 (mail slots).
A difficult task is to parse the information returned by the Jukebox and get the address information. NOTE: The address of a component is just one of many pieces of information returned by the Read Element Status command. Although it is beyond the scope of this Q&A to go over all the information returned in the Read Element Status command, the returned data has 2 headers prior to the actual data (called "descriptors"), each header being 8-bytes long. In the 2nd header at Byte 10 & 11 is how long each descriptor is, and at Byte 12 thru 15 is the total length of all descriptors. Below is the raw data from one of our Jukeboxes:
So in this example each descriptor is 16-bytes long and the total length of all descriptors is 16-bytes (so there is exactly 1 descriptor in this case). The descriptor starts on the row labeled 0010. The first 2 bytes (i.e. 00 52) is the address information; since we are getting information on tape drives, this indicates the address of the tape drive in the jukebox is 0x0052 (or decimal 82).
Did You Know ...that you have a Bus Analyzer?
You have a Bus Analyzer! If you have the STB Suite you do – BAM, our bus trace analyzer that works will all storage interfaces.
How do you find BAM? Either choose the desktop BAM Icon, or within SCSItoolbox just choose the top menu Bus Analyzer->Start BAM choice
