> Did anyone get a schematic on the values the fellow used in the > article on vintage-computer.com?
Not necessarily to squelch discussion of building optical readers, but the original question was more about archival preservation of tapes suffering from bad storage. I'd be interested in hearing how people have approached this problem in the past. In googling about yesterday, I noticed that libraries and archives are now at least occasionally using chlorine dioxide to deal with mold infestations. Wipes are commercially available for going after surfaces. There are also humidity-activated packets which produce a safe level of ClO2 gas over a period of a month or so, and are intended to "fumigate" an area. While they packets are a bit expensive, the mold apparently returns slowly enough that continuous treatment isn't necessary. Apparently ozone isn't considered very successful, and also damages bindings, so isn't used much any more. Now, the library and archival community has legitimate concerns about the long term life of the objects they're cleaning. Many in the ccmp hobbyist community seem concerned largely with extracting the data from the object once, and then largely ignoring the physical object. I wonder if we're being a bit callous here, so maybe that's an interesting topic for discussion too. Cheers, De
