I picked up a DLT4000 drive off of eBay for 1p+postage which the seller said kept dropping off the SCSI bus. It worked no problem for a week, then I forgot to refit the terminator (which I'd removed to use elsewhere) and after sorting this the drive failed its selftest - all the left-side lights stayed on. I eventually got it working again after:

Switching it on and off repeatedly until it passed the selftest and the lights went out. On booting it was then recognised and installed - but it dropped off the bus as soon as it was sent a command.

Next I tried loading a tape immediately after a successful selftest - the loading process stopped after a couple of seconds. Ejecting and reloading didn't sort this.

I eventually got a tape to load by switching off each time the tape failed to load - having to repeat the selftest "activating" procedure every time.

Some considerable amount of time had passed.

I booted the computer - the drive was recognised and installed.

It dropped off the bus.

Sensible people would have given up at this point.

Some considerable amount of time later I managed to get the tape to load again - but this time I ejected it and reloaded it without turning off the drive.

The drive was recognised and installed.

And it DIDN'T drop off the bus!

It's been working perfectly for several days.

Anyone know an easier way to reset these things?

David