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Qualstar 9 Track Tape Drive Take Up Reel

Old Computers

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I was using my tape drive today, and I stepped away for a moment. When I came back the tape had somehow come off of the transport, and a portion of it had wrapped itself around the spindle of the take-up reel.

After removing the tape, the rubber ring around the take-up reel had come loose, and had a tear in it. Unfortunately because of the tear it has ripped enough that it cannot be reused. Is it safe to use the tape on the bare metal of the take up reel, or should I find a new piece to cover the take up reel with? If I need to find a new piece, is there any particular material I should be on the look out for?
 
Ah, so you have one of the reel-to-reel Qualstars, not the streamers (e.g. 3400). I think the perfect replacement would be a Hoover vacuum cleaner flat drive belt. They're exactly 1/2" wide and plenty sturdy. Some good contact cement should "cement" the deal.

They come in various lengths and also fit other maker's machines (I've got one in a Eureka vac here). The one I'm looking at right now is a part number 385028 for a WindTunnel vac, but there are others. Time to go browsing the "housewares" section of your local big box store. You might even find one that doesn't require the belt to be cut.

FWIW, on my keyring, I carry a small (about 4 ft.) tape measure as a keyfob. It's saved me many times when looking at stuff. Most hardware or home-improvement stores carry them for cheap. Sometimes they're given out as promotional items.
 
Thank you for the info. I will definitely look into that. Any particular cement I should look for or avoid?

My particular model is the 1054. It has a SCSI interface. The Qualstar software I have for it is for Macintosh, but unfortunately it doesn't like to work with most of my Macintoshes. Certain functions always result in some error that crashes the program. The only one it works on is the laptop, but it doesn't have a SCSI port. I think it doesn't like the PowerPC and the 68k emulation since it was written for a 68k machine. Both of my 68k machines are not fully functional at the moment. :(

I have another program called SunTar that works great with it but it doesn't do some of the things the Qualstar software can do.
 
For gluing neoprene (which these belts are) I prefer good old Weldwood contact cement. Barge brand cement is also pretty good. The procedure for a good bond is pretty simple--rough the bonding surface of the belt up with a bit of sandpaper, then clean all surfaces well with acetone--don't get sloppy, as acetone can attack plastic. Just make sure they're clean and oil-free. Evenly spread a thin layer of contact cement on both surfaces to be bonded and then let both dry so they're no longer "tacky". Now, carefully apply the belt to the hub--this stuff sticks instantly, so you don't get a do-over if you goof. Smooth it down, use some tape or rubber bands to hold it place while it dries (about a day) and you should be good to go.

I'm not a Mac person (oh, I've got a couple, but that's for completeness), so I can't address your programming issues. However on DOS/Windows and Linux, I write my own software--SCSI commands are standard (ANSI X3T10), so once you get the basic interface done, any SCSI-interface tape device should work with your code as long as you don't make extensive use of a specific vendor's extensions.

Oh, one other thing that just occurred to me--on some of these units, the old rubber gets very hard (you've certainly seen this with old typewriter platens). The solution there is methyl salicylate or "oil of wintergreen"--apply some to the hard rubber and let sit for a couple of days. Some mix it with toluol or xylol, but I don't think it's necessary for most things. Better living through chemistry. Your tape drive will smell like wintergreen candy for days.
 
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I went to look at some of the vacuum belts today. All of the ones that I saw were very thick compared to the original part on the drive. Would the thicker part cause any balance/alignment problems, or should I keep looking for the specific number you gave? They did not have it at the store I went to.

Thanks for the tip with the methyl salicylate. My particular model doesn't appear to have any rubber parts, but I will definitely remember that for any other drives I may come across.

I am not a Mac person either. I just have them because the old ones are interesting to work with, and they have come in handy for doing a few tasks such as working with the tape drive. What is really annoying about them is that I can find no info about the error codes the program gives. It just says: "Unspecified error of type: <number>", and no information can be found on the internet about them.

Programming my own software sounds like a fun challenge. I have never written any drivers though.
 
I don't think the thickness will matter at all. The tape speed is governed by a roller pickup, not the reel hub. I suppose you might also take an old bicycle innertube and cut it up to the right size--it'd be much thinner, if that bothers you.

Throw some of your error codes my way--I'll see if they make any sense in my collection of documentation. This is SCSI after all, so sense keys are fairly well documented.
 
I don't think the thickness will matter at all.

The takeup reel has no flange, so I would think that anything attached to the hub would have to be pretty thin to keep
the tape that is wound upon it from wobbling.

A balloon might work too.
 
What do you think of electrical tape? Or do you think that could damage the magnetic tape if the adhesive degrades?
 
I don't like the idea of sticky adhesive--electrical tape tends to "bleed" with time. I have ugly memories of Slipknot Grey tape. You might look at 3M Temflex--an old-style rubber splicing tape, but I'd wonder if you could get a level layer--it's designed to bond to itself (wonderful stuff if you're trying to make a waterproof connection)--and it's fairly thick. The reason I suggested a flat vacuum cleaner belt is that there's no need to stretch the stuff. Just cut it precisely to length and contact-cement it on.
 
Are you talking about the self-fusing tape? How would you keep it from forming a "hump"? You really want to stick the tape/rubber to the metal hub, not to itself.

I'll admit that the self-fusion tape is great stuff, particularly for repairing cables and the like, but I'd think that it'd be pretty hard laying down a nice even layer of it for reasons that Al posted above.
 
The self-fusing silicone tape should be soft enough to be able to shave it after it's stuck together... though getting it perfectly round would still likely be an issue. Maybe spin the reel and use an x-acto type chisel?
 
Well, there you go. I've never had the problem on my 1260S, which should be the twin the 1052.

Actually, I"m amazed that these drives work at all--the speed at which one reads at 6250 is incredibly slow.

One of these days, I mean to grab a 1052 and modify it for 800 NRZI--should be fairly easy.
 
FWIW my Qualstar 1052 seems to work just fine without the rubber ring.

That was my experience also with a 1052 when the rubber ring on the take up reel fell off. I just made sure I wound the tape with some tension when manually loading it and didn't have any issues with it slipping.

I ended up getting rid of all of my 1052 drives for other reasons.
 
modify it for 800 NRZI--should be fairly easy.

picking off the signal after the preamp? Not much else past the phase decoder will be of much use.

somewhere I have disassemblies of a couple of versions of 1052 firmware.

the problem I was told in doing that was the motor speed isn't constant enough to work well with data that
isn't self-clocking

would be nice to know if it can be done, though. I've got a couple of dozen of them that I collected in the
early 2000's, even going as far as mounting a 7-track head on one of them.

I may go back and try doing something with that again, though I have a couple of HP 7/9 track RO drives
that might be a better starting point
 
Well, that's the idea. NRZ data is pretty much self-clocking in odd parity--and I don't think that there were any 9 track even-parity formats. We used to run up against this issue with the old 7-track drives. You could write even parity--but not any 00 characters, because there was no way to detect them. In other words, in 9 track, there's no way to have data+parity all 0. And yes, I'm interested only in reading the things.

All of the 800 bpi NRZ drives that I can find available are streamers--and that doesn't work well when you're dealing with potentially sticky tapes.
 
AFAIK, all 9 track tapes are odd parity. That says that there's a pulse in at least one of the read channels for each frame. So the data is self-clocking.

There was an issue in the 7-track world--you could write tapes in even parity--as long as you avoid the binary 00 character, which the drive couldn't tell from a blank tape.
 
Thank you for the info everybody. I have learned a lot about this drive. I just picked up a few more reels of tape the other day and I am looking forward to getting it connected to other machines besides the old Macintosh I have.

Right now I think I will use it without the rubber until I can get the supplies. As for a solution to the problem I think I will use the vacuum belt. I might look to see if I can find something that is of similar thickness to the original piece too.
 
Necro-posting here, but maybe this will be of some use.

I finally decided to replace the takeup reel rubber strip on my Qualstar 1260S.

I now have a roll of 1/32" thick neoprene sheet that measures 12" wide by 32 feet. I've made a jig to slice off 1/2" wide strips of the stuff. Clearly, I'll probably use only one strip myself. If anyone needs a strip to work on their drive, drop me a line and I'll stick a couple in an envelope.

FWIW, I found that good old Scotch Super 77 spray adhesive works well and is not messy.
 
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