[rescue] Sun 3 Workstation

[Plamen Mihaylov]

There are transparent bands which are also too tight to be used on regular
QIC cartridges, I haven't tried them on mini QIC though.
I would recommend the NISSHINBO rubber band, as I already recovered like a
few hundreds of QIC tapes during the last year.

On Wed, Jan 4, 2023 at 11:40 PM Kurt Nowak via rescue <rescue at sunhelp.org>
wrote:

> 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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>
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