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<p>I know this is an old thread, but I finally gave up, bought the 6
inch plastiband bands, wrestled them onto my QIC DC-6150 tapes and
using <br>
</p>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><span
style="color: oklch(0.3039 0.04 213.68); font-family: fkGroteskNeue, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji", "Hiragino Sans", "PingFang SC", "Apple SD Gothic Neo", "Yu Gothic", "Microsoft YaHei", "Microsoft JhengHei", Meiryo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0.08px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: oklch(0.9902 0.004 106.47); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">dd
if=/dev/rst1 of=tape.img bs=32k conv=noerror,sync was able to
extract the contents to a file on my SPARC10, and then tar it to
get at the files themselves. <br>
</span></div>
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<div class="moz-forward-container">I 3d printed clamps to hold the
drive wheel and one of the idlers in place while I stretched the
band over the other idler. I doubt that it's possible to do this
withut crimping the tape, but if you do it with the tape fully
wound on one end, hopefully the damage will be limited. <br>
</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
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<div class="moz-forward-container">I have no idea what all was on
any of these tapes which would suggest that a print of what was
written to them enclosed in the case would be a good idea.</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
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<div class="moz-forward-container">I also discovered that the Sun
QIC-150 drive had never had its heads cleaned. It was easy to do
with a cloth and isopropyl.</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container">Unfortunately the old
Pro/Engineer designs I was looking for were not on these tapes. I
have a stack of Exabyte tapes and I can hope they are on one of
these.</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container">john ferguson</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container">st petersburg, fl</div>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
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<th valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap">Subject:
</th>
<td>Rubbe bands to revive qic tapes?</td>
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<tr>
<th valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap">Date: </th>
<td>Sat, 7 Jan 2023 19:59:38 -0500</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap">From: </th>
<td>john ferguson <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jferg977@aol.com"><jferg977@aol.com></a></td>
</tr>
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<th valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap">To: </th>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org">rescue@sunhelp.org</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">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.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I'd love to be able to recover the stuff I had in 93.<br>
<br>
thanks much for the alert.<br>
<br>
john ferguson<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">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 <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org"><rescue@sunhelp.org></a>
wrote:
<blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">Yeah I went down the Plastiband path about a year ago after watching
Curious Marc's video on them for his HP85s - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" 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.
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 <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org"><rescue@sunhelp.org></a>
wrote:
<blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">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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Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2023 23:21:41 -0800
From: Alan Perry <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:alanp@snowmoose.com"><alanp@snowmoose.com></a>
To: Kurt Nowak <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:knowak@alumni.calpoly.edu"><knowak@alumni.calpoly.edu></a>
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Subject: Re: [rescue] Sun 3 Workstation
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Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2023 13:43:37 +0000
From: Jonathan Chapman <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:lists@glitchwrks.com"><lists@glitchwrks.com></a>
To: The Rescue List <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org"><rescue@sunhelp.org></a>
Subject: Re: [rescue] Tape Bands, was: Sun 3 Workstation
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<blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">I would recommend the NISSHINBO rubber band, as I already recovered like a few hundreds of QIC tapes during the last year.
</pre></blockquote>Do you have more information on these? I'd love to give them a try!
Thanks,
Jonathan
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</pre>
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