Hi, last night was supposed to be the last time I was going to boot VMS before it will be forever banished from my house (because we finally have an Ultrix 4.5 tape and my uVAX-II runs NetBSD and Ultrix and can write to TK50 :-). The only reason I had to boot VMS once more was to write myself a uVAX diagnostic tape. And of course, whenever you start VMS you're in for trouble :-) I'll cut it short and ask your help for the following matter. Part of the diagnostics tape procedure is to initialize a file system on the TK50 with this command (I didn't invent this, it comes right from a DEC supplied DCL script.) $ INITIALIZE MUC6: ELAN When that runs the tape scrunches and spins happily until suddenly: %PBC0, Port is Reinitializing ( 45 Retries Left). Check the Error Log. %INIT-F-VOLINV, volume is not software enabled What the heck does that mean? Yes I have VOLPRO privilleges and I think the tape writes fine, as I have used it for other reads and writes. It happens with both VMS 7.1 and VMS 5.4. There is probably some "obvious" thing you have to do, but what? Here is the error log, if it tells you anything: ****** ENTRY 3677., ERROR SEQUENCE 110. LOGGED ON SID 0B000006 ERL$LOGSTATUS ENTRY KA64A CPU FW REV# 6. CONSOLE FW REV# 4.0 XMI NODE # 1. I/O SUB-SYSTEM, UNIT _MUC6: MSLG$L_CMD_REF 61F60004 ORB$L_OWNER 00000000 OWNER UIC [000,000] UCB$L_CHAR 0CC44038 DIRECTORY STRUCTURED SINGLE DIRECTORY "SEQUENTIAL BLOCK" ORIENTED FILE ORIENTED AVAILABLE ERROR LOGGING ALLOCATED CAPABLE OF INPUT CAPABLE OF OUTPUT UCB$L_OPCNT 00000029 41. QIO'S THIS UNIT UCB$W_ERRCNT 0003 3. ERRORS THIS UNIT UCB$W_STS 0810 ONLINE SOFTWARE VALID CDRP$L_MEDIA 00000000 CDRP$W_FUNC 000C READ PHYSICAL BLOCK CDRP$L_BCNT 00000050 TRANSFER SIZE 80. BYTE(S) CDRP$W_BOFF 0170 368. BYTE PAGE OFFSET CDRP$L_PID 0001000D REQUESTOR "PID" CDRP$Q_IOSB 000001F4 00000000 IOSB, 0. BYTE(S) TRANSFERRED I think it's got something to do with this "SOFTWARE VALID" status, but what is that and how can I convince this thing to go ahead? thanks for your help, this is just about the last time I'm going to bother you with my silly VMS questions. regards, -Gunther -- Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org