[ On Saturday, April 3, 1999 at 23:37:22 (-0700), Kenneth D. Merry wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: kern/7300: 'chio ielem' does not work well
>
> It does an inventory on startup, and has sensors on the door, so I suppose
> it knows pretty well where all the tapes are.
> 
> The Ampex also does an inventory on startup, and doesn't really need the
> initialize element status.

Yes, I've heard there are some libraries that are smart enough to do
this, if configured so.

However I've also heard of others that use bar-code readers to try and
read the physical label on the media, and that this operation can
sometimes be unreliable and require several retries.

Then there's the question of what happens when your library accomodates
hundreds or thousands, or more media slots....  ;-)

I think the current code, with the bug fixed, is correct for the worst
possible case -- it's only a timeout after all....

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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