Destructive Imaging of DECTAPE II Media

[r.stricklin]

On Jan 29, 2015, at 1:56 AM, Christian Corti <cc at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Jan 2015, Al  Kossow wrote:
>> On 1/28/15 8:37 AM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
>>> I found the older posts about band installation and about restoring stretched bands with hot water. I do not recall, however, whether anybody has posted about successfully unsticking the band from the tape media without stripping oxide. That's something I'd sure like to know about!
>> 
>> http://www.hp9845.net/9845/tutorials/savetapes/ has an interesting discussion of the problems of recovering DC-100 tapes but doesn't mention unsticking the tape. I'll keep digging. I suspect it will be wetting the band at the point of contact with the tape. I'm guessing the
> 
> It's simple: heat.
> I heat the belt with the radiation from a halogen lamp (or other light bulb that emits enough heat). But I suppose that the first couple of minutes of a tape baking session will also do it.

IME, at least with DC600 carts, I get consistently better results peeling the belt off before baking, than trying to remove them afterward, just in terms of the sticky residue it leaves and the quality of reads through that residue. I should mention that it always leaves a mark, but I have yet to see the oxide pull completely off to make a transparent spot. If you’re actually pulling oxide off, that’d be a different scenario.

ok
bear.