About this time last year Bob Paynter of the Akron Beacon Journal and Judy Miller of the San Francisco Chronicle were pulling their hair out in frustration over tape drive difficulties (See Uplink April, 1991). Paynter's Qualstar 1260 tape drive just never seemed to work. Sometimes it would do as he asked, and other times it would just rock back and forth interminably. Paynter, who was suffering from problems with XDB at about the same time, probably thought his PC and tape drive were possessed.
"I didn't know what was wrong with it,' he said. "It was like asking a kid if his first car was operating properly. I just didn't know.'After a more than a few panic calls to Qualstar technicians, Paynter discovered his tape drive problem had a name - intermittent C-75 component (a capacitor in this case) on the read board. He also discovered that the "intermittent" problem was particularly aggravating because some- times the part would work and sometimes it wouldn't.
Simply put, Paynter pack- aged up his Qualstar tape drive and sent it back to the company for re- pairs. Qualstar, as it so happens, is the company of choice for many newspapers because of the portable lightweight tape drives they manu- facture. The 1260 tape drive is an in- expensive, 6250 bpi-capable drive, and is usually purchased through CHI Corp. CHI manufactures the controller card and software that go inside the PC to make the tape drives and computers communicate.
According to Qualstar techni- cian Dan Nguyen, Paynter's drive problems may be the exception and not the rule. There are other prob- lems causing similar symptoms that have simple solutions, he said. Qualstar customer support has a few "quick fixes" - such as cleaning the heads or re-seating the read and interface cables and the controller card - if your drive is acting demon-possessed. "I've found that 50 percent of the time re-seating the interface card and the interface cable solves the problem," Nguyen said.
And what about the other 50 percent? Well it's not that easy. The read cable, for example, has caused more than its share of headaches with no at-home solutions. Miller can more than relate to that particular problem. Now in possession of her fourth Qualstar tape drive, Miller was forced to send back two of her first three drives because they wouldn't function properly. "Our first drive didn't work, so we sent it back," Miller ex- plained.
"CHI Corp. was really good to us, and they sent us another one that worked at first. Then cen- sus data arrived and it started to rock back and forth." All Miller could get was a 'C3' or head error. She immediately called Qualstar and talked to a tech- nician who walked her through head cleaning and reseating - making up 50 percent of the problem - and got the drive working again. The next day, Miller said, it just consistently started rocking.
After sending the errant drive back to Qualstar Miller found that the replacement (the third by this time) they sent, wouldn't work at all. Ed Foldessy of the Wall Street Journal has a similar story to tell. "We had plenty of problems right from the beginning," Foldessy explained. "I would download one tape and everything would work fine. But when I'd download the next tape, all I would get is a read error." Foldessy said he'd then clean the heads - which became a ritual - and the same thing would happen, again and again and again.
"Qualstar finally sent me a new read cable, but after a few tapes the same problem would crop up again," he said. "I finally gave up and sent the drive back to Qualstar." "They told me their was nothing wrong with the drive, but they upgraded the hardware and shipped it back," Foldessy said. 'I haven't had any problems since." The culprit, according to John Thome of CHI Corp., is a grey rib- bon found in the older model drives connecting the green read-board to the head.
When Uplink talked with him a year ago, Thome said that the green card-edge connector ribbon was the problem, and that CHI was sending customers new cables. According to Nguyen, Qualstar now uses a blue cable from a different vendor and reports much better performance. He also ex- plained that when you send your drive in for its yearly tune-up, Qualstar engineers replace pesky problem parts like the dreaded grey cable.
Qualstar has also identified a read problem with the old Hamilton heads when reading certain tape brands and is now installing DRH heads on new machines. Nguyen recommends using only 3M 700 Blackwatch tapes. Brant Houston of the Hartford Courant, said that his current Qualstar drive is working fine. Houston, like Miller, went through four drives before getting the 1260 model upgrade. "After a lot of misery we have finally got a drive that works fine," Houston said.
"The problem is that after going through that misery, there is a lot of mistrust, and my company would probably not pur- chase another one." Houston's drive problems, like those of Paynter, Miller, and Foldessy, had to do with the read cable. With that problem rememe- died, all are happy with the current performance of their drives. Other problems which Qualstar technicians have found within the past year include fried power boards (due to electrical surges), "lost clusters," and faulty controller cards.
Nguyen maintains that the most common problem plaguing the tape drive is the accu- mulation of dirt on the head. Qualstar recommends that you should clean the head and every- thing in the tape path every two hours of use. This includes rollers, guide and the tape cleaner below the head. Make sure to apply pressure when cleaning the head but not so hard as to scratch it. Clean the head horizontally with a swab or q-tip and isopropyl alcohol - 90 percent or higher, Nguyen said.
"I got to the point where I cleaned the heads every five min- utes, it was almost like a voodoo ritual," Paynter said. "But to quite honest, I have been remiss since I haven't had problems." "I've had no problems with the drive at all," Miller said. "Eve- rything is working just fine." "I guess you could say the fourth (drive) was a charm."