Quoting Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>:
If you're going to use this thing, do check the carbide (sometimes ceramic) cleaning blade. You want the edge to be sharp and smooth; if it's nicked or chipped, it will end up doing more harm than good.
In this case, it's really just for show - I don't have a real 9-track drive, or any tapes. That was why I'd prefer an unusable tape, rather than destroying a good tape by passing it through a cleaner repeatedly. However, tapes do seem really quite cheap and easy to find.
I suspect that a carbide insert for machine tools might be cobbled up as a replacement, if required.
I suspect the blade is actually missing. There's am empty spot that looks like it might have taken a cartridge at once point in the tape path. Maybe nothing actually goes there, but on the tape path diagram, it seems to show something with a narrow gap the tape passes through. If I wanted to make it functional, I could fairly easily make a cartridge that fits in the spot as above, and passes the tape across a blade of that sort without a great deal of pressure.
I would really like a working drive sometime, so I am actually considering doing this...
Cheers, Mike
