Looking for Vendor Who Can Repair AIT Drives

[CHANGE username to westes]

I am looking for a vendor who can repair AIT-2 and AIT-3 tape drives,
preferably a company with this type of drive as one of their
specializations. I have a number of drives that hung during firmware
upgrades, and the standard Sony tech support response to this condition is
always one of: 1) We can't help you; 2) Why would you ever upgrade
firmware; 3) Talk to your vendor (it's a generic Sony drive, and Sony is
the vendor . Sony's AIT technical support group is really something so
pathetic it is difficult for me to understand why Sony even puts their name
on the service. Why not just put up a recording saying that Sony doesn't
provide support?

 

[Rod Speed]

I am looking for a vendor who can repair AIT-2 and AIT-3 tape
drives, preferably a company with this type of drive as one of
their specializations. I have a number of drives that hung during
firmware upgrades, and the standard Sony tech support response
to this condition is always one of: 1) We can't help you; 2) Why
would you ever upgrade firmware; 3) Talk to your vendor
(it's a generic Sony drive, and Sony is the vendor .

The vendor is who you bought the drive from.

Sony is the manufacturer, not the vendor.

Sony's AIT technical support group is really something
so pathetic it is difficult for me to understand why Sony
even puts their name on the service. Why not just put
up a recording saying that Sony doesn't provide support?

Likely because that would piss even more off.

 

[CHANGE username to westes]

The vendor we bought the drive from wants $3900 to repair the drive.
Considering you can buy equivalent condition working AIT-2 drives in generic
form that run the same firmware for around $500, that's plenty reason to
want to find a third-party repair organization that can repair the drives.

With LTO, we get those repaired regularly for less than $1000 when the
vendor who sold the drives wants $2500 or more. I don't see any reason why
it should be different with AIT-2 or AIT-3. Surely some organization has
deep knowledge about these products and can repair them. I'm just looking
for a referral to specific repair companies.

 

[Rod Speed]

I was JUST commenting on who the vendor is.

The vendor we bought the drive from wants $3900 to repair the drive.
Considering you can buy equivalent condition working AIT-2 drives in generic
form that run the same firmware for around $500, that's plenty reason to
want to find a third-party repair organization that can repair the drives.

 

[Pastor Randy Starkey]

Did you ever find a repair center? I need one too.

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

I never did find an AIT-2 repair center. Sony's technical support for
AIT-2 was so beyond pathetic it defies easy description. I guess the
suggested repair path is to buy a new drive, and don't ask questions like
"how do I recover from a hung library firmware upgrade"? Sony can't
answer, and Sony doesn't even make a good faith effort at trying to answer.

Some casual inspection of the internals of the AIT-2 drive mechanism
suggests it is a very complex device, with many small mechanical operations
inside. Frankly, it is impressive that they got it to work at all, let
alone reliably. I imagine it would be a difficult product to repair, at
least cheaply.