3592-C06 IBM TS1120 Tape Controller

The IBM 3592-C06 is the System Storage TS1120 Tape Controller, the successor to the 3592 Model J70 controller, built for System z attachment. It supports up to four 4 Gb/s FICON attachments, up to eight ESCON attachments, and an intermix of ESCON and FICON, and it has two 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel adapters for the tape drives.

Up to sixteen 3592 tape drives can attach to it for some configurations. The C06 takes 3592 J1A, E05, E06, EU6 and E07 drives, and it supports 3592 drive hot swap, capacity scaling and segmentation, WORM capability and all 3592 cartridge types. It also supports the System Storage TS3400 Tape Library. 3590 tape drives are not supported, and SCSI and Fibre Channel drives cannot be intermixed on one controller.

A 3592-supported Fibre Channel switch is needed for more than four 3592 drives. The 2109 switch is not supported by the C06, and its 4 Gb Fibre Channel switch must be used only by that controller. Directly attached hosts can be up to 10 km away, or up to 100 km through a FICON switch with repeaters.

The unit is 442 mm wide, 573 mm deep and 172 mm high, weighs 28.1 kg without mounting hardware and 39 kg with it, and takes 1190 watts on a single phase. Front controls are a Power On button, power supply indicators, a Reset button and an LCD. IBM feature codes for the C06 include 3441 (FICON short wavelength), 3442 (FICON long wavelength), 3488 (4 Gb Fibre Channel switch), 4641 (install controller in rack) and 5595 (control unit encryption). IBM made the 3592-C06 generally available on 16 June 2006 and withdrew it from marketing on 23 August 2011.