hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) (10/20/90)
We've recently had some interesting experiences with 3480 tape cartridges
which have experienced high humidity. It appears that after running for a
while, they heat up and glue themselve to the tape head.
We had an air conditioning failure which exposed the tapes to relatively high
humidity (it fealt a lot like a green house). I've only seen this problem
with a StorageTek 4280. The Fujitsu M2481 we have was unfortunately not
allowed to be used for an experiment to see if it would fail in a similar
fashion.
I was informed that this is a common failing of the 3480 media (by StorageTek
field service). It's not the kind of thing you'd see in a computer room, but
shipping an improperly packaged tape might get you there. In the lab, we now
store the media in a large piece of tupperware with silica bags (yep, overkill)
to avoid future problems. This seems a large nuisance for most users.
Has anyone else had any experiences with this problem?
(If I get sufficient responses, I'll post a summary)
--
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Jim Hutchison {dcdwest,ucbvax}!ucsd!fps!hutch
Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesman for FPS computingbill@bilver.UUCP (Bill Vermillion) (10/22/90)
In article <11818@celit.fps.com> hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) writes: >We've recently had some interesting experiences with 3480 tape cartridges >which have experienced high humidity. It appears that after running for a >while, they heat up and glue themselve to the tape head. Yup - that's a classic case of excess humidity. I spent from 1954 to 1983 working with tape on a daily basis in radio, tv, and finally running a pair of 24 track audio studios. There is a good explanation of the problem in this month's issue of audio magazine. There is a cure, which involves baking at low temperature (not over 120 degrees) to drive the moisture out. Get the magazine, and you will see. It covers audio, but in regards to this tape is tape is tape. -- Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill : bill@bilver.UUCP