30 Apr
2015
30 Apr
'15
3:21 p.m.
Question for all in general and Al Kossow in particular... There is a
scanned version of the Qualstar 1260 Service Manual on bitsavers, but it
cuts off right where it gets interesting, just before the schematics in
Appendix C... Does anybody have the full version somewhere with the
schematics at the end? (BTW, the 1052 manual version has the schematics).
The Qualstar tape drive in question hooked up to my Mac SE/30 (of all
things!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqIrMXxPGUA
But it misbehaves now (squeaks while motor reverses and fails reads test,
hopefully mechanical?). And my second unit caught another virus and now
refuses to load tape or get the motors going. Both used to work fine. Time
to open them up I guess.
- Marc
30 Apr
30 Apr
3:26 p.m.
I have one that I overpaid for (1260)-- It squeaks.
It blinks out the error code for "read after write failed" and refuses to
put anything down on the tape, but seems to load and fast forward / rewind
correctly.
I have a 1052 with motion fault that throws tape all over the room and
won't load.
Sorry to hijack but would love if any experts on these drives pop up!
On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 3:21 PM, Marc Verdiell <marc.verdiell at gmail.com>
wrote:
Question for all in general and Al Kossow in
particular... There is a
scanned version of the Qualstar 1260 Service Manual on bitsavers, but it
cuts off right where it gets interesting, just before the schematics in
Appendix C... Does anybody have the full version somewhere with the
schematics at the end? (BTW, the 1052 manual version has the schematics).
The Qualstar tape drive in question hooked up to my Mac SE/30 (of all
things!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqIrMXxPGUA
But it misbehaves now (squeaks while motor reverses and fails reads test,
hopefully mechanical?). And my second unit caught another virus and now
refuses to load tape or get the motors going. Both used to work fine. Time
to open them up I guess.
- Marc
--
Ian Finder
(206) 395-MIPS
ian.finder at gmail.com
3:40 p.m.
On 4/30/15 3:26 PM, Ian Finder wrote:
Sorry to hijack but would love if any experts on these
drives pop up!
Both drives have essentially the same underpowered reel motors. It wouldn't
surprise me if the motor bearings have dried out. I must have a dozen of the
things, and I've never gotten any of them to work reliably. They are direct
drive with speed control determined by a disc encoder in the tape path and
are VERY slow to change direction.
The 34xx series was better, but not great.
The other thing I noticed was the internal Pertec-SCSI converter board would
sometimes hang. There were two different generations of them, I see I never
bothered to upload the firmware to bitsavers from them.
5:58 p.m.
On 04/30/2015 03:21 PM, Marc Verdiell wrote:
Question for all in general and Al Kossow in
particular... There is a
scanned version of the Qualstar 1260 Service Manual on bitsavers, but it
cuts off right where it gets interesting, just before the schematics in
Appendix C... Does anybody have the full version somewhere with the
schematics at the end? (BTW, the 1052 manual version has the schematics).
The Qualstar tape drive in question hooked up to my Mac SE/30 (of all
things!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqIrMXxPGUA
But it misbehaves now (squeaks while motor reverses and fails reads test,
hopefully mechanical?). And my second unit caught another virus and now
refuses to load tape or get the motors going. Both used to work fine. Time
to open them up I guess.
I dunno, I finally got my 1260S to work very reliably--it's very slow of
course, particularly at 6250 GCR. The Pertec to SCSI interface is a
bit strange. When it hits a filemark, instead of setting the correct
status, it transfers exactly 1 byte.
If your tape has the sticky-shed problem, the thing will squeak like a
rusty bedspring and eventually give up with an error.
It's better than a lot of cheap streamers, but that's about all I can
really say about it. I find that the combination of the 1052 service
manual, the 1260 service manual that ends with Appendix A and the 1260
user's guide gets me by.
OTOH, I get the drive pretty much in pristine condition for $60 shipped.
It was previously at U of Texas medical center. It doesn't owe me
anything.
--Chuck
3522
days inactive
3523
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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aek＠bitsavers.org -
cclist＠sydex.com -
ian.finder＠gmail.com -
marc.verdiell＠gmail.com