[SunRescue] Sun 3/160

[BSD Bob]

> Hello,
> 
> I have a sun 3/160 with a dead tape drive, and no hard disk. Can I send a
> hardisk to someone and have SunOS 4.1.1. installed on it then sent back to
> me? 

Ahh, the old deaden tape drive syndrome....

1.  What type of tape drive is it (Wangtek or Archive)?
    Wangtek has the tape that you push into it and it load automatically.
    Archive requires you to seat the tape and move a lever over to load.

2.  On either tape, check very carefully by opening up the top lid of
    the case (pull the back three screws and lift/slide the lid back
    to open).  Look inside the tape drive and down at the rubber drive
    wheel.  If the tape is spinning but not advancing the tape (test
    it on a spare unimportant tape), you have a dead, decomposed rubber
    drive wheel (veddy common syndrome).  If it is a Wangtek tape,
    you can retire the drive wheel by using some surgical rubber tubing
    sized to fit, superglued in place.  Vacuum or gas hose or even
    air hose may also  work, if it is sized appropriately.  I have
    not found a good size to use for retreading Archive drives.

3.  Test on a spare tape, after retreading,  to see if it will spin
    correctly.   If it does, load and go.

It the tape drive wheel is fine, then check for loose cabling, or even
a burned cable (easily done if the internal scsi cable was reseated
off 1 row of pins on the VME bus connector (ask me, I blew one up that
way [ahh, melted the cable that way].....(:+{{.....).

IFF that fails, we will come up with another solution....

Bob