amr@rti.UUCP (Alan Roberts) (09/08/89)
Hello, A coworker recently relayed a posting from this group to me, mentioning that Exabyte is now selling "dry" cleaning kits for Exabyte 8mm drives. The article mentioned the recommended cleaning interval. I'm guessing that Exabyte's recommendations presume that one is starting with a clean (new?) drive. We have several Exabyte drives which have been in service for some time, with no cleaning at all. Does anyone know if Exabyte recommends any type of initial, different cleaning (perhaps some sort of return-to- factory for disassembly/cleaning) BEFORE one begins using the dry cleaning tapes, so that one starts with a clean drive? I don't want to waste time and money on the dry tapes if they can't cope with the current state of the drives (or worse yet, manage to do some damage given the current state). Do the dry kits suggest any type of visual pre-inspection, to determine if a more complex initial cleaning is in order? For that matter, do our Exabyte drives need some "latest, up-to-the-minute" firmware to even support the cleaning tapes? Any additional information would be appreciated. As a non-reader of this news group, I don't want to waste news bandwidth with what might be a rehash of old material, so a mail response would probably be more useful.