On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 09:23:39AM -0800, Sean Whitney wrote: > I have a bunch of DLT tapes I want to erase and give to freegeek. I > don't have a degausser, nor do I really want to invest in one.
Before worrying too much about this, find out what Free Geek would do with the tapes. I brought them about 50 pounds of QIC tapes a few weeks ago. I got the impression they were going to take off the aluminum bottom plates to recycle, and scrap the rest. DLT tapes don't have much worth recycling, IIRC. A bulk tape demagnetizer is a handy tool to have around, when you have magnetic media. I bought one at Radio Shack decades ago. Essentially a transformer with zillions of turns of thin wire around a core with one side removed. I use mine in a room 20 feet from the nearest media - a one foot gap is perfectly safe, but things tend to get set down in the wrong places around here. The extension cord idea won't work - the current going up one wire cancels out the current going down the other. You need lots of turns to make a big field, and a magnetic core to concentrate the magnetic field where you want it. A shredder might be easier than a demagnetizer, but the tape might get wound around the grinding cylinders. If the ventilation is good in your kitchen, you could microwave a cartridge, which would melt the tape layers together. Guaranteed unreadable after that. I microwave CDs to destroy them, often doing a whole stack at once, with a cup of water for "ballast". I run the fans for an hour afterwards, to get rid of the smell before my wife gets home. :-) Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
