Hm, that's honestly not a bad idea. The encoder wheel is pretty far down
the axle on the rear one so as long as you're careful that will probably
re-melt and re-combine the oil/clay/whatever that grease is.
Always several ways to solve a problem. And listening to the TK70
merrily streaming along and backing up the ESDI disk is kind of nice.
Chris
On 9/3/26 19:29, Jacob Ritorto wrote:
Good stuff Chris, thank you.
I should chime in that, due partly to fear and partly to laziness, I have
sidestepped Chri’s much better “take apart and re lubricate” method by very
carefully heating the axles of the capstans using an RF soldering station and
spinning the capstans by hand (while quite warm) until they “feel” smooth
again. Effective Relube without the risk of disassembly. No new chemicals.
This has worked on all three tk50s I’ve tried it on and they continue to work
after, I think, nearly two years. I try to use them often so they don’t sludge
up again.
—Jake
On Sep 3, 2026, at 19:04, Chris Zach via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote:
TK50's and TK70's have a bad rap for this. The key problem is twofold:
1) Tapes stored in dungeons tend to be crap and shed stuff
2) The capstans on the TK50 are very important and need to be lubricated
For the first, I go with good quality tapes and before I put a tape into my
collection I clean the heads, then run the tape through a backup or two then
check the heads. If dirty I pitch the tape and clean. If clean I clean the
heads again and put it in service. Same process you should go through with any
new magnetic media (RL02, RX01, etc....)
For the second you really need to take the drive apart, remove the bolts on the
front and rear capstans (marking the bolt's orientation and how many turns to
take off) and lubricate the bearings with fine watch oil. They should spin
easily the whole problem is the oil dries out and since they use tape friction
to turn and the rear one is connected to a tachometer having them drag will
drive the tape unit insane and lead to unspooled tapes, read problems, all
sorts of insanity.
Remember they don't have tension arms, the capstans are how they figure
everything out.
Aside from that, fine. I use mine as backups with no issues. Just never
introduce a new tape without checking the heads, otherwise the crap will get on
your good tapes like an STD.
C
On 9/3/26 17:55, Rob Jarratt via cctalk wrote:
Be very careful when reading them, they will shed and stick to the rollers. You
may need to bake the tapes. See this account:
https://www.magneticscrolls.com/blog/tk50-tape-baking
Regards
Rpb
On 03/09/2026 10:05, hlep via cctalk wrote:
Hi Rod,
Do you have any external TK 50 or TK 70 tape drives?
I'm working at an archive in Germany and we've got some TK-50 tapes and we've
been looking for some hardware to access them with.
Best,
Josh
On 2026-09-03 08:37, Rod Smallwood via cctalk wrote:
Hi Guys
My DEC Collection needs downsizing.
Im in the UK so for the US only the small stuff would be worth shipping
If you need anything PDP8, PDP11 or VAX please indicate item you might want
Rod
