The tapes don't have to be cheap tapes to have problems.  It can also
have to do with the storage of the tapes, Cool Dry vs. Warm Moist; how
dusty the environment, and what kind of lubricant.  Some lubricants will
decay, others will chemically alter or otherwise harm the objects that
they come in contact with, etc.  There are a lot of different things
that can cause problems with old media.  The best advice is to
periodically read/verify tape media and copy/move them over to new
media. (this only applies to things that you want for a long period of
time)

Kevin Newman

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Zoltak [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, September 21, 1998 9:44 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: Bicycle Tire fix for Tapedrive
>
> Wirt,
>
> Were these really cheap tapes? I have tapes 20 years old that aren't
> hard or sticky and they're still readable.
>
> John Zoltak
> North American Mfg Co
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Wirt Atmar [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Monday, September 21, 1998 12:35 PM
> > To:   [log in to unmask]
> > Subject:      Re: [HP3000-L] Bicycle Tire fix for Tapedrive
> >
> > Jeff Woods writes in regards to getting spare parts:
> >
> > > They won't get them and will retire the ancient beasts in favor of
> > some
> > >  newer, bigger, faster, cheaper, smaller, more compatible
> device...
> > Just
> > >  like everyone always does with old computer gear.  And I suggest
> > that folks
> > >  find a way to copy those archive tapes to newer media *before*
> the
> > old
> > >  drive (and the old media :) fail.
> >
> > Jeff's recommendation should be taken to heart. Just a week or so
> ago,
> > we
> > retired our second to last Classic machine, a micro XE. In
> attempting
> > to
> > transfer over all of our archived tapes onto DDS, I loaded several
> of
> > our
> > archived tapes that hadn't been read since they were written six
> years
> > prior
> > -- and I was surprised and disappointed to find that I couldn't read
> > any of
> > them if they were of a certain brand.
> >
> > The lubricant on the tape had congealed and had become a sticky goo.
> > When I
> > attempted to run these tapes through the 7970E, they squealed and
> > cracked and
> > all eventually failed when the tape up drive couldn't generate a
> > sufficient
> > amount of torque to break the adhesion of the tape layers on the
> > supply reel.
> >
> > No matter how many times I forced the tape drive to directly run the
> > tape from
> > supply to takeup, without going through the normal tape path, I
> > couldn't
> > loosen the tape sufficiently to get it to read. There was nothing
> > wrong with
> > the magnetic information written on the tape. It was just sticky --
> > and it was
> > leaving all of its goo on all of the component pieces of the tape
> > drive as it
> > went through the read path.
> >
> > Luckily, there was nothing on the tapes other than some archived
> > customer
> > databases. While I would have liked to have moved these databases
> over
> > to the
> > 918 that replaced the micro, it wasn't a catastrophic loss.
> >
> > But the moral is: you can never be sure old media and old drives. In
> > this
> > case, the spirit (the software) was willing, but the flesh (the
> > hardware) was
> > weak. It pays to reincarnate the hardware every so often.
> >
> > Wirt Atmar