<div dir="ltr">Yeah I went down the Plastiband path about a year ago after watching Curious Marc's video on them for his HP85s - <a href="https://youtu.be/wuMBOiwPnOg">https://youtu.be/wuMBOiwPnOg</a> 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.<div><br><div>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.</div><div><br><div>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...</div><div><br><div>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.</div></div></div></div><div><br></div><div>-Kurt</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jan 4, 2023 at 12:52 PM Alan Perry via rescue <<a href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<div>On 1/4/23 10:19 AM, Jonathan Chapman
via rescue wro<br>
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<div dir="auto">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. <br>
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<div dir="auto" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br>
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<div dir="auto" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)">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.</div>
<div dir="auto" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br>
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<div dir="auto" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:14px;color:rgb(0,0,0)">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.<br>
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<p>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.<br>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>alan</p>
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