5 Feb
2006
5 Feb
'06
3:04 a.m.
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006, Tony Duell wrote:
construction as those for the HP85. The problem is
that the belt sticks
to the oxide layer on the tape, and/or the tape sticks together, and you
get major loss of the magnetic coating when you try to read the tape.
Needless to say this makes it unreadable.
So you try to shred a tape first and after that you begin to think about it?
Everyone who *knows* that the belt is sticking opens the cartridge and
tries to unstick the belt without damaging the tape. This works very fine
by applying heat (similar to baking sticky tapes, but here the tape is
not sticky, it's only the belt). And the tapes are fine afterwards. It's
how I revived all the original HP cartidges with software for the HP1000
(dated from 1980 to 1985) that I have. I've made backups, of course, but
they are still fine.
There are other tape cartridges that are really bad, notably DC-300 QIC
tapes from around 1977-1982. They have sticky belts *and* sticky tape
*and* a belt that will simply tear when the tape is moved.
Christian