5 Mar
2014
5 Mar
'14
4:39 p.m.
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:38 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
Any leftover crud would be fatal, so tap water is most
definitely out
because of the dissolved salts it contains. Distilled water might possibly
work.
That's what I was thinking, but I remember hearing someone on this list (I
think) saying they cleaned a pack under the kitchen sink. I was shocked to
hear it worked.
The only time I have seen a pack cleaned by hand (as opposed to in a
specialized cleaning machine) was when our college IBM
1620 sprung a leak
in the (hydraulic) head actuators of the 1311 drive. The IBM tech replaced
the faulty gasket, bled the hydraulics, and cleaned heads and packs using
Kimwipes soaked in reagent grade isopropyl alcohol I obtained for him from
the chemistry department stock room.
Isopropyl alcohol is a mild solvent and well suited for removing oily
stuff. The key point here was to use high purity stuff; drug store
"rubbing alcohol" would certainly not be a good idea.
If the dirt you're dealing with is soluble in water rather than in some
alcohol, then distilled water might be the right option. But I would make
it distilled, preferably from a chemical supply company, nothing less.
I've got access to a full-up cleanroom, so some chem-grade isopropanol and
DI water is no problem. In fact, a while back, I fixed an MFM hard drive
from an IBM PC/AT in the cleanroom. Completely
dismantled the platters from
the spindle, put it back together, and got several more
months of service
out of it, until it wouldn't spin up on its own (had to kick-start it).
Pictures here: http://imgur.com/a/LbfZb
Thanks for the info!
Kyle