On 11/14/22 04:25, Shoppa, Tim via cctalk wrote: > I've been reporting on 9-track tape seal failures over at least the past 2 > decades here. > > I first noticed the problem in the very early 2000's, and thought it was just > random onesy-twosy failures, possibly contributed to by ozone in LA region, > but over the past 20 years the failures have progressed. > > Sometime in the past couple weeks the last of my "soft" 9-track tape seals > failed, because there is nothing but broken tape seals left hanging in the > Wright-Line rack that had all my "new" aka 3M Blackwatch 703 tapes. > > Very very few of the older (I think of them as IBM or 70's/80's style) "hard > plastic" tape seals failed. >
I wrote about this problem here at least 2 or 3 years ago, Although there must have been millions of these soft seals manufactured (that's not an exaggeration; the US government, for example, used hundreds of thousands of them). And yes, the IBM autoloader tape seal(for 3400 series drives) is very durable--I haven't seen many of these fail. But what I call the "Wright Line" PVC tape seal will age out and eventually crack and break. Usually this occurs where the "hook" is attached, due to the attachment being a hole punched in the PVC belt. On a couple of occasions, I've had the seals split longitudinally. This is almost epidemic on 1960s and 70s 7 track tapes, due to their age. Locating replacements has proven to be an exercise in futility, particularly when one realizes that even relatively new ones are doomed to fail. What I've done for customers is return their 10.5" reels in 16mm plastic tape "cans" in the 800' size. The fit is perfect and I've received no complaints. Film "cans" for smaller reels are also available. My source for these is Urbanski Film, although there are other vendors--and the "cans" are still being manufactured. --Chuck
