On Jun 12, 2016, at 7:38 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > Well its not always the tape. I have three instances of tapes that > would not feed or lace up where I got rid of the problem without doing > anything to the tape at all. In fact all subsequent tapes have had no > problems. It took 30 seconds and apart from taking the metal cover off the > back off the drive I dismantled nothing. > If I am right and can run a load of tapes through the drive. Then I'll > say what I did. If I'm wrong then nobody will needlessly try my method. > I will say its not cleaning the heads or the EOT sensors. You should do > that any way.
The metal tape path rollers are used as tachometers to make sure the tape is feeding at the correct speed. If the tape drags over them, the firmware will consider the transport jammed and abort. A drop or two of light machine oil over the axle has been enough to get the rollers moving again on my TK50s where this failure mode has occurred. There are multiple failure domains involved. Lubricating the feed roller spindles doesn't solve the sticky tape problem. ok bear. -- until further notice
