[TUHS] Re: Several QD-600A Tapes from Bell Labs Circa Early 90s

It’s true. Nothing I’ve tried has been truly reliable in terms of dealing with the inevitable mechanical problems arising from age related decay of these carts. They are an absolute disaster, easily an order of magnitude or two worse than TK50 ever was. Honestly I’d sooner face the task of recovering a stack of 100 TK50 carts than face another 5 DC600 QICs. That said: I have recently worked out a process that looks promising. But I’ve also had this experience with DC600 more than a handful of times, and each time, in the fullness of time, it turned out I had just gotten lucky in some specific regard. It’s worth noting that sometimes, carts have survived into their senescence without succumbing to the worst of the mechanical troubles. Those tapes are easy, one pass, get it done, move on with life. When that _hasn’t_ happened, the process is utter hell. I can tell in about twenty seconds by visual inspection which category a tape is likely to fall into. Some brands are better than others, but this is still no guarantee. If it turns out this new process is actually reliable (and is not just revealed to be another form of roll-the-dice) I will share it. It’s better for everyone if I’m not the only person doing this work. It’s nowhere near a science, but art can still be practiced and passed on. I am currently sitting on a backlog of more than a thousand carts, both mine and others’, with no viable path to clearing it within the next year. So I am not taking on any more of this sort of work, for the moment. It’s not impossible I could start taking work again, but I can’t promise when that might be. ok bear.