[rescue] VS80 DLT tape drive question

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

After putting the whole thing back together and in the external 
enclosure... I heard
something rattling around inside...

I took it apart, and floating around in the external enclosure was the 
spring...

I think it is broken though... maybe Dan can confirm...

in crude ASCII art, it looks like:
    __
   / /\
  /\/_/
 /
/


I think that one 'leg' of the spring is broken off.... unless the spring 
is supposed to
go on the 'wide' shaft end (not visible when assembled), as it looks 
like there might
have been two plastic 'bumps' on the end of it, that could have engaged 
with the
inside 'flat' section... but if so, those 'bumps' have worn off....

Can anyone confirm if my spring is broken, or if the larger diameter end 
(left side)
of my flap is supposed to engage with the flat section in the center of 
the loop of
the spring ?

For now I think I'll reassemble and test with the VCR spring (which I 
put on the
left 'pin' of the flapper, visible when assembled (between the 'plate' 
of the flapper
and the plastic frame that the left side of the tape 'slides' on.

ASCII art:

  ____ where I wonder if the original spring should go
 / ___ left side of tape slot
 |/  _ where I put my modified VCR hub lock spring
 || /
 |||
 ________________________________________
|_--|                                  |-
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    |__________________________________|



At least I did find the spring, so I don't have to fear about it 
floating around inside
the drive (unless a piece of it broke off... in which case, then a piece 
could possitly
be inside.  (unless stuck to a magnet of one of the motors, compressed 
(canned) air
did not blow any pieces out, and I've not found any more pieces in the 
external
enclosure the drive mount sin).

Thanks to everyone...  if anyone has any DLT8000s or VS-80 drives they 
aren't
using... let me know... I like having two drives of a given format (I 
have two DLT4000
drives now), in case one dies.  Alternately, if I had say 4 VS-80s in an 
external
cab, I'd have 160G uncompressed capacity.... (fileserver has 250G of 
capacity
however... so even with 4 I'd couldn't do a level zero if my drives were 
full of
uncompressable data (not likely though)).

Thanks !

-- Curt