Dec TU81 tape drive issues

Mr Ian Primus ian_primus at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 27 16:29:05 CDT 2007


After cleaning and checking it out, I fired up my
newly acquired Dec TU81 tape drive today. It gave an
error code of E56 on the front panel. I tried clearing
the error, and loading up a reel of tape and hitting
the Load switch. It makes a whirring noise, and the
take-up reel turns a small amount, then it shuts off -
the Logic Off light lit.

So... looking in the manual on bitsavers, it looks
like E56 is a servo control sort of error. Before I
start tearing into this drive in what may be a dead
end at a bad motor, I figured I'd ask the experts here
- Am I looking at a bad servo, or is this some known
failing capacitor/regulator/fuse sort of a problem?

Thanks!

-Ian



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