General Information on the 3490/3590 Tape Drives

Environment

OS Level: AIX Version 4.1.4
Type/Model: 590

Problem

General information on the 3490/3590 tape drives is requested.

Solution

General information on the 3490/3590 tape drives is provided below.

There is a 2.4GB maximum capacity per cartridge.
There is a 14.4GB capacity for a 6-tape magazine.
The effective transfer rate is 3 MB/s (megabytes per second).
writes at 18 & 36 track and can read 3480 tapes
The transfer size of the SCSI adapter can be changed to allow a rate of 3 MB/s by running the following command:
```
   instAtape -s 0x300000
```
The 3590e contains a 7-tape magazine with a capacity of 16.8GB of data at 2.4GB per tape.

   | Special Files for the IBM 3490e or 3590 Tape Drive             |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | Special       | Rewind     |  Trailer      | Unload on         |
   | File          | on Close   |  Label        | Close             |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*     | Yes        |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.1   | No         |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.2   | Yes        |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.3   | No         |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.4   | Yes        |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.5   | No         |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.6   | Yes        |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.7   | No         |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.20  | Yes        |  No           | Yes               |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.40  | Yes        |  Yes          | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.41  | No         |  Yes          | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.60  | Yes        |  Yes          | Yes               |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   | /dev/rmt*.null| Yes        |  No           | No                |
   ------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES:

The rewind on close special file writes two filemarks before the rewind operation is chosen, then only one filemark is written.
The reten on Close and the Bytes per Inch options are ignored for the tape devices supported by this driver. These tape products automatically perform the retension operation when needed. The density selection is automatic.
The rmt*.null file is a pseudo device similar to the /dev/null AIX special file. The ioctl calls can be issued to this file without a real device attached to it, and the device driver will return a successful completion. Read and write system calls will return the requested number of bytes. This file can be used for application development or debugging problems.
The rmt*.smc file can be opened independently of the other tape special files. This special file applies to the IBM 3590 devices only.

[ Doc Ref: 9538444538462 Publish Date: Apr. 28, 2000 4FAX Ref: none ]