SCSI Tape drive problem

[Doug Poland]

Matthew Seaman said:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 09:18:27AM -0600, Doug Poland wrote:
>
>> I'm running 4.9-STABLE on a box with an older HP 35480A DDS tape
>> drive.  Recently the drive started spitting out any tape I insert.
>> It simply will not accept any tape I load.  I've tried 5 different
>> tapes and it does the same thing.  Loads, lights blink for a second
>> or two, and the tape is spit back out.
>>
>> Is this thing dead?  Given its age and limited storage capacity, I
>> would imagine that repair is not a cost-effective option.
>
> Sounds pretty dead to me.  You might be able to resurrect it by
> stripping it down (I'm guessing it's way out of warranty by now...)
> and cleaning out any dust and gunk from the mechanism.  Cotton buds
> and iso-propanol can do wonders in the hands of an adept -- however,
> don't try and clean the recording heads directly, as they can by quite
> sensitive.  If you can, run a new cleaning tape on it a few times.  No
> guarrantees that this will work at all though.
>
> Chances are it's just plain worn out.  Tape drives don't have
> particularly great longevity.  Hmmm... 35480A -- goggle, google.
> That's a DDS-DC (somewhere between DDS-1 and DDS-2) or 2--4Gb
> capacity.  Yup.  It's pretty much worthless, even if it was in fully
> working order.  Bin it, and maybe buy a DVD+RW which will have a
> greater capacity and cost a great deal less to run.
>
I figured as much... thanks for the info.

--
Regards,
Doug