[rescue] Sun 3 Workstation

[Kurt Nowak]

Yeah I went down the Plastiband path about a year ago after watching
Curious Marc's video on them for his HP85s - https://youtu.be/wuMBOiwPnOg
I  hadn't heard about them before that. Unfortunately I didn't have very
good success either. I felt the green ones were just a little too tight and
put too much pressure on the tape rolls for QIC150s. Also once you get them
on, (a minor feat in itself), the tape ends up creating a little slack
because of the excess pressure with eventually leads to bad things
happening in the cartridge.

On some machines (like Apollo for instance) you simply have no choice, but
for Sun3 you have other options. Tapes are fun IF they are fresh and
healthy, but too much of a hassle and nail biting experience if not IMO.

I really wish someone in China would produce replacement bands for the
aging QIC tape fleet out there that are made to the same specs as the
original 3M ones. I actually thought about contacting some drive belt/band
producers of a similar material so see if someone could create a "small"
batch. One can dream...

For the 3/260, I would save yourself time and also go down the net booting
path and boot off of Sun4c that has a heterogeneous server install of
4.1.1. I recently had good success in with this method, although in my case
my server was a homogeneous 3/60 which was a bit easier to set up since
they all had the same arch.

-Kurt

On Wed, Jan 4, 2023 at 12:52 PM Alan Perry via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org>
wrote:

>
> On 1/4/23 10:19 AM, Jonathan Chapman via rescue wro
>
>
> Considering their age, it's likely those tapes are in bad shape. A lot of
> times the magnetic surface on the first block will stick to the band. Or
> the drive band will snap or be unable to hold proper tension and the whole
> thing will end up a tangled mess.
>
>
> Yeah, you're not going to be running those tapes without at least a new
> band. Unless of course you mean 1/2" open reel.
>
> I started doing Plastibands for new QIC tape bands once the "boil NOS
> later generation 3M bands" stopped producing good results. It works pretty
> OK, though I've found the clear plastiband-alikes lift oxide off the tape
> if you let them sit (the green actual Plastibands don't seem to). The
> drives also all need service at this point, at least cleaning and
> lubrication. It's fairly common, especially on older QIC drives, for the
> capstan roller to turn to goop. Sometimes it even looks and feels OK until
> you start running the drive...I had a ftape QIC for an AT&T 3B1 UNIX PC do
> that to me a few months ago. Often hoses the tape.
>
> If the OP decides not to keep the tapes, he can send them to me :) Someone
> gave me a 3/260 a few years ago and I have started accumulating Sun 68k and
> VME stuff since then. I have a few boxes of QIC tapes to image when I get
> to them.
>
> I think that I bought the last of the green Plastibands. They came in an
> assortment pack with something like 5 or 10 green ones in a pack. I have 50
> green bands now. The vendor that I got them from no longer has any of the
> assortment packs. I also have some of the clear bands, but I haven't
> installed any in a tape yet.
>
> After I substituted the green bands, on a few tapes I had a problem with
> the oxide coming off of the tape as it rounded the metal posts inside the
> cartridge. One solution that I have seen is to cover the posts with plastic
> sleeves that can rotate, but I haven't tried it yet. Also, I retired a
> toaster oven to use to bake the tapes (if you are unfamiliar with this,
> look up "sticky shed"). I haven't tried that either and, after I set aside
> the toaster oven, someone told me that baking doesn't accomplish much on
> QIC tapes. But I still see people baking them, so I will try it at some
> point.
>
> Somewhere I have a link with excellent info on what can go wrong with QIC
> tapes and how to mitigate those problems. Just need to find it.
>
> alan
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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