decayed capstan in Archive QIC

I fixed my qic tape drive this way: Open the drive and scrape away the goo that used to be what I called the drive bogy from the shaft it is on. Find a roller from a printer. I used an output roller from my Epson Actionprinter 3250. The inside diameter is MUCH smaller than the drive's driveshaft. Don't worry. Cut the length of the replacement roller to the correct length or it will cause the drive to bind and that is not good. Take a ballpoint pen of the kind you can remove the business end from. I used a cheap, non retractable bic. I streached the roller over the body of the pen using the nose of the pen as a starter beacuse the diameter of the roller is so tiny. Once you get the roller past the removable end and it is fully on the body of the pen, remove the nose from the pen. Clean the drive's driveshaft with alcohol or fingernail polish remover to remove any traces of the old gooey roller. Fingernail polish remover is great stuff for dissolving the rubber goo but remember that they put stuff in it to make it 'good for you' like vitamin E. Clean the shaft thoroughly with alcohol after useing the remover or if you are more organized than I am, you will have some ACETONE around which is the same thing without the gook added. Place the now blunt end of the pen against the face of the driveshaft and slide the streached roller onto the shaft. Once it is on, check to make sure it is of the correct width so as not to contact the case of the tape or the tape its'self. it should only contact the drive bogey on the tape when the tape is inserted in the drive. You are done and the roller will last at least months as mine has if not for years. Good luck. This took me about two hours to conceive of and accomplish and my Data General 6311 tape drive has had many many happy hours of shoeshining tapes without fail since. My drive is a bit larger than most of the little qic (DC2000 type) drives but I was scoping those drives for a replacement roller and noticed that the bogeys are about the same size on all of them. Technoid Mutant at your service -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey S. Worley Technical Services Bits & Bytes Computer Services Inc. 1979B Hendersonville Road Asheville, NC 28803 828-684-8953 - voice 0900-1700 five days 828-687-9284 - 24hr fax Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk? Technoid(a)Cheta.net -----------------------------------------------------------