Exabyte media

[Jeremy Webber]

In article <c9bff5d119ad2734a964 at canremote.uucp> graham.elliott at canremote.uucp (GRAHAM ELLIOTT) writes:

   There  was  some  traffic  on  a  local newsgroup recently about media
   errors with Exabyte drives.  In summary, the concensus  was  to  avoid
   Sony tapes.  We use BASF almost exclusively, without any problems.

This is interesting, because discussion I have seen elsewhere suggests that
Sony is the _only_ brand you should use.  I think some other brands cause
problems, but most likely any high-quality tape should work (poorer quality
ones are a definite no-no).

I've been using Sony tapes for years now on Exabytes with no problems.
However, I have seen problems caused by dirty heads (get a head cleaning tape)
and by a manufacturing fault with early model Exabytes (a bad batch of
capacitors), both of which caused (apparent) media errors.  If your tape drive
has not been cleaned for some time it may be necessary to get someone who knows
what they're doing to disassemble the Exabyte and clean the heads by hand.
This should _not_ be attempted by someone who doesn't know how to handle video
heads as they can be destroyed very easily by mishandling.

	-jeremy

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Jeremy Webber			   ACSnet: jeremy at chook.ua.oz
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