calling all HP7970 tape owners....

[Jay West]

Marc wrote...
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[snip] How the hell does the darn bracket work? You'd attach the bracket
first to the rack, then slide in the drive and screw it in to the bracket
*from the inside* of the opened unit, while delicately balancing 130 pounds
of tape drive? Yikes!
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Yep. Fortunately, the one that I am actively using was already mounted in
its final rack when I got it. For expediency, I've just been moving the
cable to different systems as I need it. But for the current system build, I
have to mount one "from scratch" so am going to go through the process you
describe soon. I'm betting the rack wheels need to be chocked.

"Delicately balancing"... hah. I was going to mount the drive yesterday but
then decided I should check into having more brackets made so I'm sending my
bracket off for measurement/duplication (to see if it's even possible, it
may not be). The bracket has a lip that the drive sets on while you do the
bolting so it may not be "that bad". If the bracket can be duplicated, I'll
wait till copies are made. If not, once I get my bracket back, I'll go
through the process and let you know how it goes and if there's any tips I
discover/share to make it easier.

In the event that the lip doesn't help, my thought was to mount a couple of
the HP angle-iron rails (flat surface up!). That way the tape could sit on
this while you wrangle the bolts and then remove the angle-iron rails.

Here is a link to pictures of the bracket, in case someone has it laying
around but doesn't realize "this is what that's for"...
www.ezwind.net/hp2000/7970E/
The bracket is pictures 0520 through 0525

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I think I am just saying I might need one bracket ;-)
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You're added to the list, qty 1

J