Don't remember that story, Bill...do tell? My 3480 story is from the late 90s, when I was visiting customer sites occasionally to deal with problems. I had come across a 3480 cartridge with a bright red shell, and used that as my "traveler" tape: if I needed to load/unload something onsite, the customer would take it into the data center (ah, remember when data centers were local?) and the fact that it was red made it easier to get back, as the operators would know "Oh, right, the RED one".
Until I was at a site that only had STK silos. They put the tape in the silo, which accepted it, but then...it said "I see no tape here". Surprise, red laser+red plastic=invisible! They wound up powering down the entire silo so someone could physically reach in and retrieve it. They were NOT happy about that. Next trip: red AND blue cartridges in my bag. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Friday, June 27, 2025 10:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 3420 environmentals? >3420 tape drive had power supplied by IBM 3803 Tape Control. 3420 >itself haven´t a direct connection to an installation energy point, 3803 has >it. I remember the bunches of cables involved with the 3420s+3803, but I did not remember the exact arrangement. As we have said, it was a long time ago. (And yes, the 3490-type tape cartridges are as handy except it was seldom that there were as many of these just lying around waiting to be used. Of course, that depended on the type of installation involved, etc, etc.) With 3480s one could make an interesting "show" for visiting executives. Remember the oscillating sort? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
