Tape Drive Capstans
Mike Stein
mhs.stein at gmail.com
Thu Jan 29 16:30:45 CST 2015
----- Original Message -----
From: "Al Kossow" <aek at bitsavers.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 3:18 PM
> Tape is the bane of my existence.
>
> All of the rubber parts will eventually soften or crack. I've mostly
> seen softening on QIC drives, and roller cracking on helical DAT or
> Exabyte
> drives. If you look on the audio tape deck forums, they claim a pinch
> roller
> is only good for maybe five years of life.
Odd; the belts certainly stretch and often turn to goo, but I haven't run
across any melting rollers or idlers in my piles of consumer audio and video
stuff yet. Maybe just not old enough; I wonder if there's any way to prevent
or at least delay the deterioration it if it hasn't started yet.
m
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