Article 159014 of comp.os.vms:
Andreas W Wylach (aw@vax3.wupper.de) wrote:

: Hi everybody,

: A friend of mine gave me a HP DAT streamer tape, which I connected to my
: VAXStation 3100/76. When I do a 'show device' at the >>> prompt before 
: booting the system, the tape is recognized as MKB500 (TZ12). 
: The streamer is in a external box.

: When I try, to submit the command 'INI MKB500 TEST', everything seems to
: work fine, but when it tries to write the init data stuff on tape,
: VMS pulls out a 'parity error' message to the screen.

: First I thought, maybe the fact, that it is a non-Digital device, could be
: theproblem, but I have a non-Digital CD-ROM connected to my workstation,
: whichworks without any problem in anyway of use and opertaion on VMS.

: I guess, that the switched have to be adjust at the bottom side of the tape,
: but theonly documentation I got, are for several Unix workstations, not for
: VAX/AXP stations running OpenVMS. Do I need a different driver ??

Umm, first the bad news. That's an unsupported OS.
For Digital boxes generally we suggest 11011110 if they are using Digital
UNIX ... I'd suggest the same here as the switch setting does something
that may make some boxes happier (truncates inquiry data length by 3 which
for some boxes (5000s?) means they won't hang on trying to boot).

: I even tried a brand new tape for initializing, cause I thought a used tape
: could be the problem  (The first time, I used a used DAT tape though)

: The HP streamer is a HP354707 REV9 SCSI-2 streamer.

: Does anybody of you Hardware freaks out there have any clue ?!
: If any questions, please email me.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.. the only other thought is that you might
be using an old version of the firmware for that drive that doesn't support
the suggested switch setting, if so, try 11011111 which is standard default.

regards,
al
(not speaking for HP..)