[GreenKeys] resurrecting papertape. was: How was paper tape oiled ? ...

[Chris Elmquist]

The rolls most worth saving have printed labels on them at the beginning-- for example the Microsoft one has copyright and version info that's part of the "provenance".  In this particular case, I don't _need_ to read the tape as the bits are available in plenty of other places but an authentic tape from M$, for this little machine, is an interesting collectors item if not messed up.

Otherwise, the gum is deeply soaked into the tapes, which were laying on edge-- so in a pool of the melted rubber-- which means it is soaked into one edge of the tape along the entire length (if you could unroll it).

Chris


On August 13, 2015 3:03:44 AM CDT, simon <simski at dds.nl> wrote:
>How deep has the gum gone into the roll? you could try to dip the roll 
>into white spirit or even thinner, or are there written or printed
>marks 
>on the roll?
>
>
>
>On 13-08-15 05:16, Chris Elmquist wrote:
>> whatever the "oil" is, it eats rubber.  I have a large number of
>tapes for Altair 680 that were stored with a rubber band around them to
>keep them rolled up and in every case, the rubber band has melted into
>the tape and made a hell of a mess of it. Most of these tapes won't
>feed through the M33's reader now. One of them is an _unopened_ copy of
>Microsoft BASIC for the 680 which sadly now is only a gooy mess inside
>a small plastic bag.
>>
>> Chris N0JCF
>>
>> On August 12, 2015 5:12:43 PM CDT, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org>
>wrote:
>>> On Wed, 12 Aug 2015, Jones, Douglas W wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> What was the oil ?
>>>>>
>>>>> Midnight Oil, of course :-)
>>>>
>>>> Does it burn?  For that matter, has anyone tried KS7470 in an oil
>>> lamp?
>>>
>>> Well, the Beds were certainly Burning...
>>>
>>> OK, you need to be a rock-n-roller to understand the reference.
>>

-- 
Chris Elmquist