Repairing HP mini data cassette

[hesc]

Dear all,

I am trying to revitalise my HP collection. I have a 82161A digital data cassette drive with only 1 working data cassette, 1 badly repaired non functioning data cassette and 2 new unpacked data cassettes. The tape connections in the new data cassettes are also broken (I assume the adhesive tape is released) and I will try to repair those. I looked at a Youtube repairing video where one opened an audio cassette case with a sharp Stanley knive.
Does one of you have some experience with opening these small cassettes without breaking them?
I have some experience with splicing audio tapes, so I think I might be able to repair it with a 1/8 inch splicing block and subsequent adhesive tape.
Thanks on forehand for your advice.

Kind regards,
Henk Schellen

[rprosperi]

Yes, these mini-cassette tapes cases can be pretty easily opened w/o damage, and then reassembled w/o needing glue, etc.

A common problem with these tapes is the small felt pad that sites behind the tape in the center of the tape head opening has come loose from the small metal spring, and therefore does not maintain pressure on the head, so the tape cannot be read. It is fairly easy to simply replace the old pad with a new one made from felt. There is a detailed procedure described in a posting here, search for tape repair.

[hesc]

Dear Bob,

Thank you for your reply. I searched for tape repair, but did not get a result. Do you have a link?

Best regards,
Henk

[Dave Frederickson]

We went over this in 2017.
https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-75...l#pid66213

Here's Tony Duell's tape repair guide.
https://www.hpmuseum.org/guest/duell/rep82176.pdf

Dave

[hesc]

Thank you, Dave
Kind regards,
Henk

[hesc]

Dear all,

Tony Duell's tape repair guide, as suggested by Dave, was very helpful for repairing the mini cassette. As Tony expected and described, 2 parts had a problem:
- the transparent starting tape became separated from the magnetic tape by loosing the adhesive power of the adhesive tape. That was rather easy to repair, using a 1/8'' splicing block, as is used in tape audio splicing;
- the pressure felt, used for pressing the tape against the magnetic head, had loosened from the copper spring. It was easy to repair by cleaning and gluing the copper spring and felt together again.
I missed one thing in Tony's guide which I learned from looking at repairing an audio cassette tape on Youtube: the tape tends to unroll from the tape centre disk. The tape can be easy kept in place by putting a small adhesive part of a (yellow..) note sheet on top of the uprolled tape and disk. Afterwards it is easy to remove because of its small adhesive power.
The tape now runs in my digital cassette tape, can be initialized and be written and read like a new tape...
Thank you for your suggestions.

Kindest regards,
Henk Schellen

[BitWiz]

I have several boxes of unopened, still cello wrapped tapes for sale.

I opened one and used it in two different drives, formatting it multiple times and reading and writing on it The felt pads seem to be ok.

Please PM me if you are interested in purchasing any.

Thanks,

Mike