Tape Drive & Tape Archival questions...

[Tony Duell]

> 
> For taking care of #1, as far as I can tell the drive works except for a 
> rubber wheel that's turned to this lovely gooey tar.  I don't 
> necessarily _need_ to fix the drive, since I have a compatible 
> replacement, but I'd like to keep the system as original as possible so 
> if it's possible to fix without too much work I'd like to do that.  The 
> tape drive in question is an Archive 5945S-1.  Anyone have any idea how 
> feasible it is to find a replacement wheel for this drive?  Any good 
> places to look that you'd recommend?

I've not had to do that drive yet (although I have a few of them, and 
related units, that will need doing soon). But the normal tricks for 
rollers that have turned to good are to :

1) Use silicone rubber tubing over the original hub. Maybe scrape it down 
to the right dfameter if necessary

2) Several layers of heatshrink sleeving over the original hub. I've 
never had any success with this method, others claim to use it

3) Silicone rubber O-rings in grooves machined in the original or a 
replacement hub. I use this with great success on HP caculator card 
readers (including the desktop models)

-tony