ghg@en.ecn.purdue.edu (George Goble) (05/24/89)
It has been observed that tapes can be mangled by issuing a backspace file command (mt bsf n), when positioned on the 2nd half of a tape (120 Min tape). Exabyte engineering tore down one of our drives to get to the bottom of the problem. It was learned that the cause was simply a dirty capstan and capstan pinch roller. All drives which have had this problem, had been used daily for months (4-8 months) without cleaning. It turns out, most of the time, that running a drive for months does not seem to increase the error rate (there are exceptions), but it causes a buildup on the capstan and its pinch roller. This causes the tape to go slack over guide #7 (guide at the 10 o'clock posistion) on a backspace. About 6 weeks ago, Exabyte introduced a cleaning kit, good for 3 cleanings. It has a bottle of Freon-TF you squirt in a cleaning cart and insert in the drive. Exabyte claims that this should be done for every 30 GB of data transfered. If the drive clean to start with, Exabyte claims, that regular cleaning will prevent the buildup from happening. It is known, that, for drives which were run for 9 months or more (before the cleaning kit) in heavy use, cannot be cleaned this way (I tried it). Exabyte insists these drives be returned to them for a through manual cleaning once. Firmware MX 4$22 or higher is needed for the cleaning cart method. Any drives which were built or upgraded before July, 1988 should also be returned for an upgrade (they get cleaned also), as there are parts which are likely to drift out of spec and mode motor failures, etc, which are likely to happen. Contact Exabyte 1745 38th street Boulder, Co 80301 USA +1 303 442 4333 International, should ask for Cindy Lau. 8mm cleaning kit.. part # 180123 qty price 1-9 $20.00 10-99 $18.40 100-249 $16.20 They have qtys upto 10,000 if interested. --ghg George Goble, Engineering Computer Network, Purdue U, W. Lafayette IN 47907 (317) 494-3545 Arpa: ghg@purdue.edu uucp: {backbone}!pur-ee!ghg
khaw%pplace.COM@decwrl.dec.com (Mike Khaw) (06/15/89)
<3523@kalliope.rice.edu>, by ghg@en.ecn.purdue.edu (George Goble): ... > About 6 weeks ago, Exabyte introduced a cleaning kit, good for 3 > cleanings. It has a bottle of Freon-TF you squirt in a cleaning cart and Oh great. Another use of CFCs to help destroy the ozone layer. Mike Khaw -- ParcPlace Systems, 1550 Plymouth St., Mountain View, CA 94043 415/691-6749 Domain=khaw@parcplace.com, UUCP={uunet,sun,decwrl}!parcplace!khaw
henry@cs.utexas.edu (06/23/89)
# ... It has a bottle of Freon-TF you squirt in a cleaning cart ... # #Oh great. Another use of CFCs to help destroy the ozone layer. Low-contamination cleaning is one application where CFCs are *extremely* difficult to replace; they will probably be used for that long after they have been eliminated for everything else. Don't criticize Exabyte for solving a real problem in the only practical way. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu