mcobbe Posted February 12, 2003 Report Share Posted February 12, 2003 Retrospect Server Macintosh G3 tower Mac OS 9.2.2 RAM: 192 Megs, 193 Megs virtual memory Backup Device LaCie AIT tape drive (Sony SDX-300C, version 0404, driver Sony AIT DC(1.35)) Applications running: Retrospect v5.0.205, Now Up-to-Date Event Server 50,000K allocated to Retrospect Backup Scheme: Weekly recycle backup on Monday, normal backup Tuesday through Friday Problem: Every time Retrospect tries to do a Recycle backup, I get the dread 102 error and the tape is ejected. No backup is performed. Retrospect sees the tape drive fine when it is doing a Normal backup. Then, last night, it gave an error 102 and kicked the tape out, while trying to do a Normal backup. No backup was performed. Suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted February 12, 2003 Report Share Posted February 12, 2003 Error 102 trouble communicating This error occurs when the Macintosh's CPU loses contact with the backup device. The most common cause is improper SCSI termination. But it can also be caused by other issues on the bus. It is necessary to go through the SCSI troubleshooting outline below. 1) a dirty tape drive. Clean the drive with a cleaning cartridge. Most manufacturers recommend cleaning the unit once for every 8-10 hours of run time. Once a week is often enough for most people. 2) another device on your SCSI bus may be interfering with the tape drive's communication. Turn off your computer and the SCSI devices. Make sure your SCSI ID numbers don't conflict. Disconnect all SCSI devices except for the tape drive. 3) you have a bad cable. Replace the SCSI cable that connects the tape drive to the computer after removing other devices and cables from the SCSI chain. 4) you are missing a terminator or have a bad terminator. The last device and ONLY the last device in your SCSI chain needs to be terminated. Try replacing the terminator if you already have one on the chain. 5) the computer may be having a problem. Install Retrospect on another computer and try the tape drive there as the lone SCSI device. 6) the drive may be defective. If you have implemented all of the preceding steps and get failures on multiple tapes after changing cables, terminators and computers, then the drive, being the only factor that has not changed, is the culprit--send it back to your vendor for repairs. In the event that your tape is bad, you can determine what was on that tape by clicking on Configure:Backup Sets, selecting the Backup Set to which it belongs and marking all tapes other than the damaged tape "missing." Then go through the motions of a search and retrieval (Immediate:Restore:Search) and click on searching when you have selected the Backup Set and a destination drive. Make sure you're searching for "file name contains (BLANK)," and let the search proceed. Click on files chosen. Files with black diamonds next to their names are on the other tapes. The damaged tape's files will not show black diamonds. Transferring files from a bad tape is another matter. If there is a bad spot on the tape (a manufacturing defect or a spot damaged by human error), a tape to tape or tape to hard drive transfer will not work. You can transfer the data up to the bad spot, but due to the linear nature of tape, you will not be able to proceed any further. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcobbe Posted February 13, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 13, 2003 Quote: Error 102 trouble communicating This error occurs when the Macintosh's CPU loses contact with the backup device. The most common cause is improper SCSI termination. But it can also be caused by other issues on the bus. It is necessary to go through the SCSI troubleshooting outline below. 1) a dirty tape drive. Clean the drive with a cleaning cartridge. Most manufacturers recommend cleaning the unit once for every 8-10 hours of run time. Once a week is often enough for most people. 2) another device on your SCSI bus may be interfering with the tape drive's communication. Turn off your computer and the SCSI devices. Make sure your SCSI ID numbers don't conflict. Disconnect all SCSI devices except for the tape drive. 3) you have a bad cable. Replace the SCSI cable that connects the tape drive to the computer after removing other devices and cables from the SCSI chain. 4) you are missing a terminator or have a bad terminator. The last device and ONLY the last device in your SCSI chain needs to be terminated. Try replacing the terminator if you already have one on the chain. 5) the computer may be having a problem. Install Retrospect on another computer and try the tape drive there as the lone SCSI device. 6) the drive may be defective. If you have implemented all of the preceding steps and get failures on multiple tapes after changing cables, terminators and computers, then the drive, being the only factor that has not changed, is the culprit--send it back to your vendor for repairs. 1) I cleaned the tape drive. Still gives me the 102 error. 2) The tape drive is the only SCSI device on this computer. It is using an Adaptec Ultra-Wide SCSI card. 3-4) SCSI cable and termination are fine. I had the card and tape drive on another Macintosh (running ASIP 6.3, which is why the switch) and it worked flawlessly for over a year. I did not make any changed in the setup when I switched. 5-6) I have managed to get several normal backups out of the new combination. It seems to be a problem when doing a recycle. I tried this morning to complete an aborted backup and it started to erase the tape, then it immediately unloaded the tape. I am now performing a full delete of the tape to see if this might be the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcobbe Posted February 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 I have performed a complete erasure of the tape. I am still getting the error 102. I tried to manually start the scheduled backup. It actually started to perform a backup, and according to the progress bar, managed to backup 63K of data before Retrospect unloaded the tape. What gives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcobbe Posted February 26, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 26, 2003 This problem was caused by a particular hardware configuration. I have a G3 Tower with 192 megs of RAM, Virtual Memory on at 193 megs, a Orange Micro 940UW SCSI card to allow to G3 to talk to the Sony AIT tape drive. It turns out that the Orange Micro card will generate bus errors if the available RAM is more than 192 megs (!!!). I removed some RAM to drop my RAM to 160, then turned off virtual memory, so I am running completely in hardware. Backups are now running smoothly. Thought this might help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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