belonis@milton.acs.washington.edu (J.James Belonis II) (01/01/90)
8mm Exabyte tape drive home repair successful... One of my Exabyte 8mm tape drives ate a Sony tape cartridge and would not open even after powerdown and power up. The tape had apparently ridden up over the tape head cylinder instead of being wrapped around it properly. This may have been caused by badly loading the tape. I had not quite pushed the door closed far enough to latch, and the door started springing open again. I reflexively did not let the door completely open or check the condition of the tape cartridge but pressed it closed and latched quickly. The drive did not have 'warrantee voided if opened' seals on it (my other one does) so I decided to try to fix. First I probed through slots with a hex wrench to untangle tape partially successfully, but tape would still not eject. I used TORX T-8 and T-9 screwdrivers to remove the special screws in the top and was able to get at the mechanism of the tape drive but still no luck removing the cartridge. Finally found the latch outside on the left side (white plastic finger about 1" up from the bottom and 2" in from the front which holds two electrical contacts together when tape is fully inserted). This latch is accessible without taking the drive apart. The latch releases when this finger is pressed toward the front of the drive (i.e. opening the electrical contacts it compresses). The door mechanism is spring-driven, so no power need be applied; the door opens by itself. My drive mechanism was still mostly in the 'loaded' position, but when I applied power, it self-tested and completed the 'eject' operations. I even repaired the tape by cutting out the bad tape and using a Beginning Of Tape (BOT) foil marker intended for 1/2" reel-to-reel tape to splice (the mangled tape was right after the leader so I only lost a foot or so of tape). Normal SONY 8mm tape has silver foil BOT to splice the clear leader to the magnetic tape. This was much easier than I expected. Running the tape drive with the top open was an education in sweet machinery. J.James(Jim)Belonis II, U of Washington Physics Computer Cost Center Manager BELONIS@UWAPHAST BITNET (206) 545-8695 belonis@phast.phys.washington.edu Internet Physics Hall FM-15 uw-june!phastvax!belonis UUCP U of W, Seattle, WA 98195 UWSPAN::PHAST::BELONIS SPAN noon to midnite 7 days a week 24683::PHAST::BELONIS HEPNET room 32a