17 Oct
2018
17 Oct
'18
2:10 p.m.
On Oct 17, 2018, at 2:05 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 10/17/18 10:51 AM, Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk wrote:
The 1/2 inch tape drives I'm familiar with incorporate such a device. Typically
it's a ceramic thing, so it looks like a small shiny white rectangle near the heads.
It has to be scrubbed clean periodically when it gets brown from accumulated ferrite
dust.
paul
Cleaning the head from time to time may get you
through a read of a
tape for backup purposes, but there is a machine called a 'tape
cleaner' which is a drive which leads the tape through a path seeded
with knife-edges. As the tape travels through the machine, the knife
edges scrape a layer of oxide coating from the tape and smooths and
polishes the surface exposed. This will restore a tape to full
usability and should not affect data stored on the tape.
"Tape Scrapers" do exactly that. Bake the tapes first, preferably with
a lot of moving air before attempting to "clean" a tape. If you don't
all you will do is scrape off the binder.
Their original purpose was to remove surface debris, NOT cut a layer
of binder off.