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G6Tanuki · 22nd Oct 2021, 6:15 pm

The IBM guys who used to service the reel-to-reel tapedrives on our mainframes used tools that looked to be made of Brass.

Their 'alignment' process was basically to put the drive into 'maintenance' mode, load a reference tape they brought with them, attach a little box with a bunch of 7-segment LEDs on the front, then the drive did a 'fast-forward' and they twiddled the azimuth/elevation contols on the drive to get the lowest aggregate reading across the nine data-stripes on the tape.

In practice you could never get all-zeros across all nine channels.

22nd Oct 2021, 6:15 pm	#10
G6Tanuki Dekatron Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Wiltshire, UK. Posts: 14,007	Re: Are Ceramic Tools Essential? The IBM guys who used to service the reel-to-reel tapedrives on our mainframes used tools that looked to be made of Brass. Their 'alignment' process was basically to put the drive into 'maintenance' mode, load a reference tape they brought with them, attach a little box with a bunch of 7-segment LEDs on the front, then the drive did a 'fast-forward' and they twiddled the azimuth/elevation contols on the drive to get the lowest aggregate reading across the nine data-stripes on the tape. In practice you could never get all-zeros across all nine channels. __________________ I'm the Operator of my Pocket Calculator. -Kraftwerk.