Thanks for the advice, per usual, folks!
To answer the question of "where hard to see", I guess it's really an issue of
my old-man-eyes at this point. I find I need to use a jeweler's headset, or
even bench microscope, to really see anything small in detail these days. It's
hard to do that with heads in the drive -- I just can't get my head in there
that close around all the fan, cartridge carriage, etc. And seeing what's
going on while trying to clean the top head with a mirror is pretty
frustrating. Perhaps it is time to find/train a younger apprentice :-)
I do have an alignment pack. In looks to be in good shape. I have not mounted
it yet; after restoring the drives I figured if the heads were going to crash I
would let that happen on less valuable media. But to my pleasant surprise the
heads flew (more or less) and I've been able to read packs reliably on the
drive (including a DEC manufactured RKDP) without attempting a head alignment.
I did do the servo setup, but even all that was already very close to spot on.
If anybody has a decent picture of a clean/fresh RK05 head, I would appreciate
seeing it -- there seems to be some material that is really caked on to the
heads in my drive, and it would be nice to know for sure what my target is with
cleaning, and/or if the heads are damaged. in particular, what should the
"wings" near the record/erase gap look like when clean and intact?
I'm finding it takes quite a bit of work to get gunk off the heads. I'm using
kimwipes and one other low-fiber lap wipe that is a little softer, and alcohol,
and pushing/scrubbing these against the heads with swabs. It has not been the
case for me that they "clean right up".
Somebody asked about the "pox": these look to be corrosion of some sort. Only
one of my packs has had a bad case. After scrubbing down with a wipe and
alcohol, what is left behind is a little spider-like crack in the oxide layer.
In some places there seems to be corrosion between the aluminum and the oxide
lifting and flaking the oxide. It doesn't look like anything you'd want to try
and fly a head over.
The recovered data has been kinda interesting -- the drives and packs were
obtained in a surplus auction downstream of Stanford's Hansen Experimental
Physics Lab. They are mostly DOS/BATCH and RT-11 disks with Fortran and
MACRO-11 codes relating to experiments at the lab in the mid-70's through
early-80's: investigations into early resonant mass gravitation wave detectors
and free electron lasers. The names on the packs are readily found in related
scientific literature of the time. I've been working to track down the
researchers where possible for permission to re-distribute the materials, since
I think others might find them historically fun/interesting.
I'd be happy to retire these media after recovering the contents. I don't know
where to get fresher media to use afterword, though, that would necessarily be
in any better shape? If there are reputable resources for fresh media that
folks know about I'd like to hear about that too!
cheers,
--FritzM.
