Patent ID: 6483655
Filing Date: 2002-11-19
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
A magnetic-tape library system comprising:a magnetic-tape drive for at least reading data from a magnetic tape; an accessor mechanism for transferring a magnetic tape to and from the magnetic-tape drive; and a controller for controlling operations of the accessor mechanism; wherein the accessor mechanism has a hand assembly for holding the magnetic tape and a predetermined-position detecting section provided for the hand assembly to detect the predetermined position of the hand assembly to the magnetic-tape drive in accordance with the luminance of reflected light due to scanning by a laser beam, the magnetic-tape drive has a marking for positioning to be scanned by the laser beam, the marking is constituted of two adjacent areas in black and white each and these areas are arranged along the scanning direction of the laser beam; and the controller has a start-position setting function for setting the scanning start position of the laser beam in a range closer to the marking than to the sum of known widths in the scanning direction of the two areas before the marking and a positioning function for specifying the boundary between the black area and the white area in accordance with the change of luminances detected by the predetermined-position detecting section and the already-known width in the scanning directions of the black area and the white area and positioning the hand assembly in accordance with the position of the boundary.