Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

Joachim Thiemann wrote:
> Over the weekend, I got out two old DC-600 tape drives out of storage
> - a Wangtek and an Archive.  Only the Wangtek has a SCSI-to-QIC24
> interface board, but I think I can use that on either drive (the board
> may in fact be originally from the Archive drive anyways).
>
> Anyways, after a quick visual inspection and wiping some dust off, I
> did try it with an old DC-600 tape cartridge - one that I knew was not
> important.  It loaded OK and I started an attempt to image the tape to
> a file.
>
> About 1/4 into the tape something started vibrating, quickly
> escalating and before I could do anything, the tape stopped.  Result:
> rubber goo on the plastic roller that drives the DC-600 cartridge
> drive belt, some on the tape itself, and the tape shows deformation
> (wavy) on the top half.  I had to toss it.
>
Another case of rubber rot... I haven't had it happen to me (except rubber
feet, etc... most recently on a Sun type 5 keyboard... half the left 
foot had
turned to goo...  the one thing I've found that acclerates this (and damages
some plastics too), is certain vinyl? cabling...  this type 5 probably had a
keyboard cable wrapped and in contact with it's foot.  I've had some plastic
on computer cases/etc similarly damaged by prolonged contact with cables.

If you are only looking to read... find a newer drive....  I use a Wantek
525Meg QIC drive... it reads DC6150 tapes... and I'm pretty sure DC600
too.

I have a bunch of QIC drives around... I'm going to have to start examining
the rubber rollers.....

I can imagine the old 45 meg ? drive for my Sun-2 is probably toast...

-- Curt