Quantum ATL-7100 DLT Changer in SLC

[Zane Healy]

You wouldn’t be able to put TK-70 drives in this, wrong interface.  I don’t know if DEC DLT drives capable of reading TK50’s and TK70’s will work in one.  We only used DLT III and DLT IV tapes in them.  We first got one of these something like 25 years ago.  The earliest ones are rock solid, really well built, and very simple to repair.  Same with the smaller Quantum 4/52.  At the time Quantum wouldn’t send out a Quantum FE to work on the 4/52’s or 7100’s.  I’d get the guy out to diagnose the problem, get the replacement parts ordered, and then when the parts came in I’d never tell him, I simply replaced them myself.  Just be careful when taking the big side panel off that hides the electronics, otherwise you’ll rip out the sense switch.  If you can find a source of spares, you can probably keep one of these going without too much trouble.

As for the problem this one has, with the load port, just fold a piece of corrugated cardboard in half, and use it to hold the door close, I ran one in production for a couple years, so I could avoid putting in a service call.

I’ve worked with Tape Libraries for over 25 years, and the 4/52 and 7100 are two of my favorites.  The Quantum P3000 is my least favorite.  The Quantum i2000’s and i6000’s were also rock solid, but I wouldn’t want one of those at home.  

On the topic of old Quantum tape libraries, does anyone happen to know of a company that will provide 3rd Party support on them?

Zane



> On Apr 9, 2022, at 6:37 AM, Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> I have this strong desire to pick this up and install TK70 tape units. Finally I can back up my pdp11 items in style :-)
> 
> C
> 
> On 4/8/2022 11:58 PM, Tim Riker via cctalk wrote:
>> I have a Quantum ATL-7100 100 tape DLT changer. Last I checked it worked fine. It's almost as big as a fridge. I have around 100 tapes for it, not all the same density. It uses fast/wide scsi-3 differential for the drives. I think I have 2 working drives in the cabinet plus one or 2 separate external drives.
>> I think my drives are DLT-7000 or similar which gives a total capacity of 7TB.
>> Upgraded with SDLT 220 drives and tapes the chassis would have a capacity of 22TB.
>> Anyone interested in picking this up in South Jordan Utah? (outside Salt Lake City).
>> The only issues I know about it, is the tape loading pivoting door is not quite rotating correctly, and I replaced one of the AT power supplies with a unit that is NOT autoswitching. So if you want to run the unit on 220V instead of 110, you will need to change the chassis and the replaced internal power supply.
>> It's really fun to load it up with tapes, then tell it to auto-shuffle them. I have the door hot wired so you can open the door while it's operating. Easy to restore the switch if you don't want to.
>> Photos here:
>> https://rikers.org/gallery/hardware-atl7100
>> Interested, please email directly, I don't check the list very often.
>> Tim