paper tape archiving

[dwight]

They should be carefully unrolled while wet. It will be almost impossible to unroll them dry.
The same goes for the magnetic tape.
Dwight

________________________________
From: Guy Dunphy <guykd at optusnet.com.au>
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2020 12:15 AM
To: dwight <dkelvey at hotmail.com>; General Discussion: On-Topic Posts <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: paper tape archiving

Be glad you don't have to deal with this kind of thing:
  http://everist.org/pics/misc/20200719_6831_wet_tapes.jpg

A bunch of PDP 8 system tapes. That were literally soaking in liquid water when recovered.
Yes, that is mildew. They are nearly dried out now.
Still to be determined if they can be manually teased apart intact enough to be read.
After deciphering what they all are, from remnants of the labels and a paper list that
was with them.
Hopefully these are already online somewhere. If not, then a lot of work to recover.

The DEC mag tapes... sigh. Still not even thinking about them. Just slow drying.

Guy