> On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 12:47:03PM +0200, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo wrote:
> > 
> > On one of my PDP-11 systems, running 2.11BSD, the time to write one
> > whole TK50 (~90MB) came down from 15 hours to 40 minutes by moving the
> > controller up to the top of the bus!  Streaming is good!  :-)
> > 
> TK50 do actually work? 

Mine does relatively well.  I was wanting to write early BSD tapes for
2.11BSD and for 4.3BSD with mine, plus have the emergency stand-alone
boot capability for NetBSD.  Although they are a bit frustrating to
use, I have had relatively good luck with them, so far.  About 50% of
the old TK50 drives I run across work, and the rest don't.

What is the proper way to clean all the internal guts of a TK50 or
a TK70 drive?  I have been opening them up, and de-dust-bunnying them
with a blower and small camel's hair brushes.  Sometimes that helps,
but sometimes all the cleaned drives do is try to load the tape, but
never quite succeed.  The leader pickup usually works, but the start
of tape positioning often goes wacko, giving the fast pulsating idiot
light syndrome.  Is there a good cure for that kind of thing?  I am
seeing the leader sometimes not pick up correctly or release correctly,
but mostly it is the start positioning that gives me problems.  I thought
I read somewhere that that might be related to the LED lamps that read
the start hole.  Any insights are appreciated.

Thanks

Bob

> 	-is
>