[rescue] Rubbe bands to revive qic tapes?

Sat Jan 7 19:59:38 EST 2023

> This sounds really good. which specific bands have worked for you?  For some reason we backed up our hoe directories to qic tapes in the early '90s even though we had a very nice exabyte drive.  not surprisingly the exabyte tapes from that period can still be read and on the same machine they were recorded on, but alas the Qic tapes all have bad bands.

I'd love to be able to recover the stuff I had in 93.

thanks much for the alert.

john ferguson

> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> rescue list - http://sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue_sunhelp.org
>>
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> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2023 23:21:41 -0800
> From: Alan Perry <alanp at snowmoose.com>
> To: Kurt Nowak <knowak at alumni.calpoly.edu>
> Cc: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Sun 3 Workstation
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> Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2023 13:43:37 +0000
> From: Jonathan Chapman <lists at glitchwrks.com>
> To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Tape Bands, was: Sun 3 Workstation
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>
>> I would recommend the NISSHINBO rubber band, as I already recovered like a few hundreds of QIC tapes during the last year.
> Do you have more information on these? I'd love to give them a try!
>
> Thanks,
> Jonathan
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