I want to show the firmware level of an IBM / Exabyte/Tandberg
VXA-2 tape drive, for both AIX 5.2 and 5.3
to see if I can buy some fancy new tape media for it;

so far I've tried lscfg -vl rmt0
and was hoping for a "Device Specific" line
showing the firmware, but instead got back devspec lines
(Z1 210A)
(LI A170029C)
(Z0018002028300013A)
(Z3L1)

<< VXA-2 firmware versions once were of format Vnnnh,
later became Vnnnnh where h is hex, n is decimal. >>

The .PDF "Troubleshooting the IBM VXA-2 Tape Drive"
blithely says to use the vxatool program to view/upgrade
the firmware release, but on Exabyte's website I don't see
vxatool available for download for AIX.

Is there some other aix command I could issue,
or some other source of vxatool for aix,
or does this need a CE visit? I hesitate to yank the drives to
view them under windows, if there's some better approach...

Frank

On Oct 4, 11:26 am, "Frank Winans" <fwin...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I want to show the firmware level of an IBM / Exabyte/Tandberg
> VXA-2 tape drive, for both AIX 5.2 and 5.3
> to see if I can buy some fancy new tape media for it;
>
> so far I've tried lscfg -vl rmt0
> and was hoping for a "Device Specific" line
> showing the firmware, but instead got back devspec lines
> (Z1 210A)
> (LI A170029C)
> (Z0018002028300013A)
> (Z3L1)
>
> << VXA-2 firmware versions once were of format Vnnnh,
> later became Vnnnnh where h is hex, n is decimal. >>
>
> The .PDF "Troubleshooting the IBM VXA-2 Tape Drive"
> blithely says to use the vxatool program to view/upgrade
> the firmware release, but on Exabyte's website I don't see
> vxatool available for download for AIX.
>
> Is there some other aix command I could issue,
> or some other source of vxatool for aix,
> or does this need a CE visit? I hesitate to yank the drives to
> view them under windows, if there's some better approach...
>
> Frank

try
lsmcode -A

"Henry" wrote
> "Frank Winans" wrote:
> > I want to show the firmware level of an IBM / Exabyte/Tandberg
> > VXA-2 tape drive, for both AIX 5.2 and 5.3
> > to see if I can buy some fancy new tape media for it;
> >
> > Frank
>
> try
> lsmcode -A
>
Erm, doesn't that show the whole-system firmware level? I'll have to
recheck the tape media warnings, but had thought the specific firmware
of the tape drive was the important figure. Also, the format of the
lsmcode response is probably something like "ATnnn_nnn" , versus I
was told to meet or exceed "firmware 2105" which is
closer to {barely} the format of firmware numbers used on this
model of tape drive.

....but thanks for the response.