SSC-3: Locate, MEDIUM ERROR & BLANK CHECK

[Kevin D Butt]

Formatted message: <a href="http://www.t10.org/cgi-bin/ac.pl?t=r&f=r0906020_f.htm">HTML-formatted message</a>

Tape guru's, in both the LOCATE(10) and LOCATE(16) commands the following 
statement is found:
<<If end-of-partition is encountered, CHECK CONDITION status shall be 
returned, the sense key shall be set to MEDIUM ERROR, and the sense data 
EOM bit shall be set to one.>>
It seems to me to be very poor to return MEDIUM ERROR instead of BLANK 
CHECK.	A user should not be told the medium is bad.  This could cause 
them to call service when in fact, the error was not medium related. 
SCSI-2 did not have this statement.  It was introduced in SSC and 
therefore has been there for a while.  Do other tape devices actually 
return a MEDIUM ERROR instead of BLANK CHECK?
Thanks,
Kevin D. Butt
SCSI & Fibre Channel Architect, Tape Firmware
MS 6TYA, 9000 S. Rita Rd., Tucson, AZ 85744
Tel: 520-799-5280
Fax: 520-799-2723 (T/L:321)
Email address: kdbutt at us.ibm.com