Exabyte 8mm tape mangling update

[George Goble]

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 at purdue.edu  uucp: {backbone}!pur-ee!ghg