I'll bet that you could find a retired CE to verify that. You could
probably get an answer from IBM as well. Want me to send a note to our CE?
Jim
At 02:10 PM 7/19/2006, you wrote:
As far as I can recall, DB, the cleaning fluid in the nice IBM pint
cans, was nothing more than denatured alcohol. IBM packaged it for those
shops that had an "all-blue" mandate from management as far as IT
equipment went....:-)
The stiff cotton swabs that you use to clean the head could be replaced,
I think, by some soft cotton fabric on a medical tongue depressor.
Thanks, too, for doing this recovery work.....are you going to put the
recovered tape files out anyplace for others to access?
DJ
David Boyes wrote:
> Does anyone still know of a source that sells 3420 cleaning fluid and
> supplies? In the process of working through these old tapes from
> Princeton, Im burning through the small supply I have of the stuff
> rapidly (2 pints so far), and still have a few thousand tapes to go.
>
>
>
> The amount of oxide flaking and just general destruction these tapes
> have is amazing gunk everywhere. Hats off to the data recovery folks
> Id really hate to have to do this all the time. Freeze drying, careful
> rereading, multiple retries
sheesh. Phase of the moon for some of these
> volumes.
>
>
>
> Pretty scary that the circa 1970s volumes actually seem to have a higher
> readability index so far.
>
>
>
> David Boyes
>
> Sine Nomine Associates
>
>
>
Jim Bohnsack
Cornell Univ.
(607) 255-1760
