[SunRescue] Really Big Hardware That Makes Noise And Takes Up Space

[Bill Bradford]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2000 at 06:16:30PM -0800, James Lockwood wrote:
> Only minuses are that you don't get to see the tapes spinning, and if the
> leader doesn't get picked up correctly the drive gets cranky.  I did have
> one spray out over a hundred feet of tape inside it when the tape snapped.

Speaking of which, I was repairing a DLT drive the other day where the tape
had broken with about half of it spooled up inside the drive.  Got the
cartridge out, then was faced with the prospect of unspooling all that miles
of tape by hand.. but then I had a Bright Idea (tm).

Three words.  Cordless Power Drill.  8-)

(wound the end of the tape around the end of the drill, set it to turn
 clockwise, and pulled the trigger... boom, forty-five seconds later, I
 was taking the leaders apart..) 8-)

One of our tech support guys looked over, saw what I was doing, and
started laughing, but then said "hey, if it works..."

Bill

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|Bill Bradford          | mrbill at pdp11.org     | mrbill at mrbill.net    |
|http://www.sunhelp.org | http://www.pdp11.org | http://www.mrbill.net|
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