I am having problems, now and then with old DEC
cartridges, that have not been read in a while,
sticking in the cartridge, and that causes the
TK50 drive to slow down and hang.  At that point
in time, it loses all track of where it is, and
becomes bad karma.  Probably 10 percent of my
tapes do this at one time or another.  Usually,
the 4x press the red panic button works.  But,
sometimes, it does not.  When it does not, I
have been known to manually eject the cartridge,
stick 3 probes into it to undo the release
buttons in the cartridge (a 3 fisted affair),
and then manually rewind the tape.  That is a
royal pain in the whatskies.  Surely there is
a better way to do that?

I attribute the problem to the lack of a good
way to run a retension on DEC DLT cartridges.
Is there some correct way to properly retension
a cartridge, before use?  If so, I seem to have
missed that tidbit.

Any insights are appreciated.

Thanks

Bob