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Qualstar 9-track drive drive squeal?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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I decided to play with one of my "other" SCSI 9-track drives, a Qualstar 1260S. So-so progress, but as it warms up, it emits a squeal every time the reels change direction. At first I thought the issue might be "sticky shed", but it happens with any tape I put on it--including ones that read fine on my other drives.

My thought was that there's some moving rubber somewhere that's hardened up over the years. Before I start splashing wintergreen oil around, has anyone else ever experienced this?
 
I'm not familiar with that model, but I know my QIC 5.25 drive uses a rubber capstain to drive the tape. Mine melted with age (neat) but perhaps yours has dried (if it uses that mechanism)?
 
Chuck(G) said:
I decided to play with one of my "other" SCSI 9-track drives, a Qualstar 1260S. So-so progress, but as it warms up, it emits a squeal every time the reels change direction.
Click to expand...

Set screws on the drive motors or capstan tach, dry bearings? I was thinking about the last time I used
one, and remember the capstan tach bearings were pretty noisy.

Old Qualstars are direct-drive and there is no rubber in the tape path, but they have pretty weak motors
and have problems maintaining constant tape speed.

The last generation front-loaders were pretty good, but the 1052/1260 are kind of marginal.
 
Thanks, Al. I know this has been asked before on several forums, but does anyone have a manual for the 1260? I've also got a front-loader, but that presupposes a decent leader Right now, the Fuji X2444 is the workhorse, but I wanted a backup, just in case.
 
At one point I had a total of four of the Qualstar 1502 drives. One originally seemed to work well but later became slightly marginal, one had very noisy tach roller bearings, one was marginal, and one didn't work. I ended up giving them all away. I still have the Fujitsu M2444AC. If it ever quits working the Qualstar drives probably wouldn't have been working backups either.

The Qualstar drives were OK when used with the PCTD-16 controller with its onboard cache, but were constantly stopping and re-positioning when used with Q-Bus PDP-11 controllers, while the cached Fujitsu M2444AC doesn't suffer that issue.
 
I've got the SCSI model Qualstar, so there's a 256K cache built in. If the QS continues to give trouble, I'll scavenge the SCSI-to-Pertec board and put it on another drive. The 1260 itself came from a university medical center and looked as if it had never been used, so I'll try to see if it's salvageable first.

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It looks as if the 1052 service manual on bitsavers covers the mechanical aspects of most of the R2R Qualstar drives. Listening to the squeal, I note that it doesn't occur for the first few minutes of tape operation, then starts off quietly and becomes louder until the drive gives up with a tape motion error. I suspect one of the guide rollers is running dry. I'll see if a little lube makes a difference.
 
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Got them, Al! Many thanks, as usual.

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I've obtained some observations on the squealing problem. After running the drive for some time and noting where and how the tape noises are coming from, I've determined that it's on the supply reel--the little rubber pads under the flip-down tabs on the hub don't seem to be making good consistent contact with the tape reel. So when the reel slips, it squeals something awful. I can hear this as the squealing occurs at exactly the same rate that the supply reel is turning. The contact area between the tabs and the tape reel is very small.

I'll treat the rubber tabs with some wintergreen oil + xylene and see if it makes a difference. If not, I'll look for replacements.
 
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gslick said:
At one point I had a total of four of the Qualstar 1502 drives. One originally seemed to work well but later became slightly marginal, one had very noisy tach roller bearings, one was marginal, and one didn't work. I ended up giving them all away. I still have the Fujitsu M2444AC. If it ever quits working the Qualstar drives probably wouldn't have been working backups either.
Click to expand...

I ended up picking up about a dozen 1050/52s over the years, never really used them though since I always had better drives available. There are a couple of different versions of the SCSI-Pertec adapter board. I'm pretty sure I dumped the eproms and scanned the PCBs from them at some point. I remember experimenting with trying to get one to work with a different manufacturer's drive with a Pertec interface and never having much luck with it.
 
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