Restoring Old Paper Tape

[Dennis Boone]

 > Did anyone get a schematic on the values the fellow used in the
 > article on vintage-computer.com?

Not necessarily to squelch discussion of building optical readers, but
the original question was more about archival preservation of tapes
suffering from bad storage.  I'd be interested in hearing how people
have approached this problem in the past.

In googling about yesterday, I noticed that libraries and archives are
now at least occasionally using chlorine dioxide to deal with mold
infestations.  Wipes are commercially available for going after
surfaces.  There are also humidity-activated packets which produce a
safe level of ClO2 gas over a period of a month or so, and are intended
to "fumigate" an area.  While they packets are a bit expensive, the mold
apparently returns slowly enough that continuous treatment isn't
necessary.

Apparently ozone isn't considered very successful, and also damages
bindings, so isn't used much any more.

Now, the library and archival community has legitimate concerns about
the long term life of the objects they're cleaning.  Many in the ccmp
hobbyist community seem concerned largely with extracting the data from
the object once, and then largely ignoring the physical object.  I
wonder if we're being a bit callous here, so maybe that's an interesting
topic for discussion too.

Cheers,

De