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Archive Corp Model 2060E QIC-02

russell-- said:
I have inspected closely and see no shedding. The pins are spotless.
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I spent an unpleasant Sunday working on recovering (or trying to recover) 1980's DC600s stored in a damp environment.
They will all have to be baked, and bearings applied. The couple that I tried shed and stuck to the metal shafts.
Also, this was the first time I tried using the clear plastibands. I bought them just as Covid happened so they haven't been
touched in years. They are slightly sticky and really seem too short for the application. They are quite difficult to attach
and are quite tight. I could see them picking up binder from the shedding tape. I wonder if they shrink with age.
 
Plastibands (and perhaps any TPU) age badly. After I picked up some Mobilon bands, I wrote the people at Conserve with photos of my aged plastibands, quoting their squib that "they do not degrade". Mine could not be stretched to any degree without breaking or stretching unevenly (streching produces wide and narrow spans on the band).
They wrote back asking me for the UPC codes on mine and send a new batch of the 2, 4 and 6 inch ones. I don't know if I'll ever use them, but I keep such stuff stored now in my freezer.

As far as shedding, I think I ran across the worst case of it in 1/2" tape that I've ever seen. Even after baking, you couldn't unspool the tape without large patches of oxide detaching from the base--it was firmly stuck to itself. Lubrication in that case, was useless.
 
Once the Misumi-sourced Mobilon bands arrive (they allegedly finally shipped today, but still no idea about delivery date as UPS tracking is being coy), and I have a plentiful supply and don't need to contemplate borrowing bands between tapes, I am considering doing some test writes with Sytos followed by dd tape dumps from linux to see if I can reverse engineer the format and avoid the idiotic full traversals before you can even attempt to restore. The 010editor template (once you can learn to read the template syntax, might be sufficient for sytos plus format, but I haven't yet found an equivalent documentation of the older sytos 3.x format that I have some of too. Also, as an excuse for learning more about GNU poke.
 
Bands arrived on Friday, tape dumps made with dd. With one of the tapes, having successfully recovered its data, I made some initial attempts to write data to it. So far, the attempts (from linux) have failed with inscrutable errors. The idea of writing is to try to eventually create sytos archives with known contents as an aid to reverse engineering the sytos 3.x format. Is writing with ancient drives a known problem or are any tips or tricks involved?
 
As an aside, I was shipped a number of DDS tapes for recovery. Had to inform the customer that it's not possible to retrieve data from a cleaning tape...
 
Just one. Typical job these days--someone cleans out a drawer or closet full of media and wants it recovered. Most of the tapes are parts of multi-volume backups, with the rest of the set gone missing. We'll get what's possible to get.
 
Al Kossow said:
How difficult were they to install?
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It took some practice. Some took more tries than others. The archive brand cartridges has some spools that seemed more apt for bands to slip off the sides. I had a total of 18 cartridges, two of them I left the green plastibands on that I had recently installed.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Do you know about the trick with masking tape (holds the reels stationary) to make the job easier?
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I've seen the pictures, but I have invented my own method. I get the tension band on the pinch pulley, loop it around the "fat" side pulley, then hold everything down with my left hand. I take the skinny-side pulley off its axle, put the tension band on the pulley, then stretch it straight in the gap between the two tape spools long enough to reach the axle, then pull it over and slip it onto the axle. There is usually a small amount of slack in the tape at that point, so I take a small tool (a small diameter wire wrap tool) to take the tension off the skinny spool and then reel in the slack tape, then carefully lower the tension band back onto the tape. Then I check rolling the pinch pulley to make sure there is no slack and that both tape spools move as expected.
 
I guess that works with large (DC300-sized ) carts, but wait until you get some of the mini (DC2000-sized or Travan) carts with the really thin tape. Then you really need something to hold things steady while you work.
 
russell-- said:
I've seen the pictures, but I have invented my own method. I get the tension band on the pinch pulley, loop it around the "fat" side pulley, then hold everything down with my left hand. I take the skinny-side pulley off its axle, put the tension band on the pulley, then stretch it straight in the gap between the two tape spools long enough to reach the axle, then pull it over and slip it onto the axle. There is usually a small amount of slack in the tape at that point, so I take a small tool (a small diameter wire wrap tool) to take the tension off the skinny spool and then reel in the slack tape, then carefully lower the tension band back onto the tape. Then I check rolling the pinch pulley to make sure there is no slack and that both tape spools move as expected.
Click to expand...
That is essentially what I've done for years. It is difficult if the band broke mid-tape. I found the green elastibands were too narrow and would pop off of the spool when reading. Since I have no interest in re-using the tapes, I keep a small stash of later real bands and just swap them as I go through a pile of tapes to recover. I also keep a couple of baseplates with cloth around the bearings queued up.
 
Al Kossow said:
They are slightly sticky and really seem too short for the application. They are quite difficult to attach
and are quite tight. I could see them picking up binder from the shedding tape. I wonder if they shrink with age.
Click to expand...
My experience has been that they stretch with age. My solution to them being too tight is to stretch them first. If it feels like you're stretching past elastic threshhold, then you're doing it correctly. They are still slightly tight after, but much stretchier than OEM belts and seem to work reasonably. They are tacky, as you have noticed, and do end up with bits of black embedded. That also settles down with repeated use. I haven't tried to store tapes with them installed though. I am not currently storing any QIC with a belt in place. Still prefer to scavenge OEM belts from newer carts, while I can, and reuse them until they start to shred. The clear ones are ok IME, with limitations/reservations. Sometimes it gets the tape to run just differently enough that it works as a recovery tactic. Haven't personally tried elastibands (mobilon?).
 
It helps a bit if you spool some of the tape onto the empty reel to create a somewhat larger space between the reels. Now try re-banding a QIC-3080 cartridge. Makes you realize how large your fingers are.
 
Chuck(G) said:
It helps a bit if you spool some of the tape onto the empty reel to create a somewhat larger space between the reels. Now try re-banding a QIC-3080 cartridge. Makes you realize how large your fingers are.
Click to expand...
It also helps to get both sides of the bands between the tape spools without putting tension on the bands. Someone mentioned using chopsticks, but I didn't have any chopsticks on my bench, but I did have a wirewrap tool. I've noticed that either of these bands (either the green plastibands or the white mobilon) lose a lot of their tension after being stretched over the tape spools for a few days.

Another observation. One of my cartridge developed a loud rattle-like noise during tape transport. I can't tell where it's coming from. I have disassembled the cartridge several times, can't feel any bumpiness in any of the moving parts when manipulated with my fingers, but it comes back whenever the drive transports the tape. The rattle propagates through the whole structure of the cartridge, so just feeling around during the noise doesn't lend any strong clues about the origin. Mysterious.
 
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