Data Tape Spools

My most recent score involved a lot of ancient equipment. Included were several tape spools, that I'm sure were used in the early 80's. They are about 5" in diameter. Some were black paper reels, but there were some of an foil like substance. It doesn't respond to a magnet, so it's not steel. One of them has a gold color on one side of the film, though I doubt it is gold.

I'm fine to throw these in the trash - but before I do, does anyone know anything about what the film could be made of? Would it be aluminum, similar to hard drive platters? Any chance that it is actual gold foil on the tape? I don't have a gold test kit, but I suppose I could take it to a jeweler or Pawn Shop to find out definitively.


Also included in this lot was a Numeridex LC6000. I had to use Google, but it was a tape preparation device, from 1980. WOW, that was a nice piece to scrap. The case was solid aluminum, no plastic or steel there. There were several very nice boards that I think will bring comm grade. Loaded with EPROMS and thick gold fingers. There was a good motor and a large transformer. It was quite the pain to take apart, but seeing EPROMS with Intel '78 on them made it all worthwhile.

Thanks for any help!

interesting from what ya describe. Could ya post up some pics, for our forum sleuths? We do have a few ( peeks at other thread ).

Hell I'd like to just see a pic of'm for giggles. :p


Sirscrapalot - Testing testing..1, 2, 5..testing..

Good point - this are two of the reels. One is the gold tape with the green background, the other one is solid pink. There are blue ones also. There's little holes in the tape - I think they were used to feed the tape, similar to the dot matrix printers.

http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/...ps063b7e92.jpg

I thought I'd also show one of the boards that came out of the tape machine:
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/...psf350224c.jpg

And while I'm uploading images, I pulled this from an old teletype machine tonight as well that was part of the lot. Look at the silver plating!!! And as I was looking at the board, I noticed there are TWO gold EPROMS. These are my first two. Notice that one of the transistors is also gold! I'm happy with the night :)

http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2bf96d16.jpg


So thoughts on the tape? Al or trash? Possibility of gold???

Looks like plated the ribbon, but I'm no expert. Sure our experts will chime in an prove me wrong, tho I hope they don't. LOL.

Nice score on the rest to! Pretty cool score all in all.

Thanks for posting Foobar. Hopefully you'll get some answers!

Sirscrapalot - Off to pack.

That looks like mylar punch tape. Back when I was using one of those punch machines we could get the tape in paper or mylar.

Great hint! I did some googling, and I think I have various varities of this. This site confirms they are aluminum foil. Given that the price for the green/gold is the same as others, chances are it isn't gold.

Tape Rolls Made of Mylar® NC or CNC Machine Tape Reader

Thanks for the photos. Do the eproms have gold legs? I love ceramic eproms with gold legs.

They do have gold legs! And they aren't soldered in either. Nothing worse than finding something nice only to be soldered ...like the 486 I found in a laptop this week also.

Ocillating tool takes care of all soldered stuff easily...you do lose a bit, but hey it takes seconds to get the goodies...I can handle a board with all those ic's in like 30 seconds...best tool I have found for the heavier legged ones...otherwise a sharp chisle and just scratch down the legs a couple of time...then pry it right up and pull with a pair of pliers.

1-A heat gun on the back of the board will heat the solder enough to pry them off. Just don't burn the board it will give off toxic gases.
2- get a baking tray and put some sand on it. Put on a heat source, hot plate or bbq grill. Place the board face up on the sand so the solder warms up enough so you can pry off the chips.

IF YOU ARE GONG TO DO THIS IT SHOULD BE DONE OUT DOORS NOT INSIDE YOUR HOUSE !!!!

Some ham radio operators still use tele-type machines to communicate with. You may want to not tear into them(it) until you have done some investigating. Mike

That is some neat stuff. Thanks for sharing.

Foobar. Hello, found your post about the the mylar tapes, do you still have them? I have some tape punching equipment, and am looking for some mylar tape. I don't want, or need to buy a 1,000 foot roll from the company that sells it!

Thanks - Kolchak

BRASSCATCHER - THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU on the heatgun. I took that 486 off the motherboard in less than 2 minutes. I'm amazed at how clean it came out. Of course I wasn't wearing the gloves that I should have and grabbed the CPU too fast. Nice burn mark - but happy to have the 486 separated.


Kolchak - what I have has already been used and punched.. Sorry.

Foobar your welcome glad I could help.....oh yeah forgot to mention wear gloves;). That will also work for pins out of fiber cpus.

Foobar, thanks for the reply on the tape. The photo of the pink and green/gold tape shows 'sprocket holes' used to move the tape were punched, but no data holes are punched in it. That tape should still work, so if that's what you have, I'm still interested in it, and any blue tape you have.

Thanks again.

Kolchak

kolchak1 (at) yahoo dot com

Update for anyone in the future who finds this forum. After testing, it was determined that the gold is a plastic coating on top of aluminum. I'm hoping my yard will let me throw the tape in with AL foil. If the tape hadn't been punched, it would have been quite valuable on Ebay or to private individuals who are interested. I was able to sell a small portion of tape that was unused for several times the scrap value of all of the tape.

I also found that Teletype has quite the Ebay market for it. That board with the gold EProms above came from something that I shouldn't have scrapped. The Teletype 83's are going for $100 - $300 on Ebay. I checked several other other items I had from the same period and found no market, so I assumed this would be without a market as well. I'll not make that mistake again. Lesson learned.