I bought a sealed/unused Archive Python drive about a year-and-a-half ago. It worked perfectly for a long time, then out of nowhere produced errors in the LEFT channel only. I e-mailed Paul Plotnik at Pro Digital and he suggested cleaning it well as it is likely a clogged head. I did research, bought the tools, cleaned it well with 100% alcohol and tiny cleaning swabs. I definitely cleaned the four tiny DAT heads on the rotating drum. I pieced the drive back together exactly as it was, and installed it into the PC two nights ago. I transferred a 90m tape perfectly, then tried it a second time today and get nothing but errors in both channels, and it makes a light buzzing noise when rewinding and when playing back the tape.
I have the choice of getting it looked at by Paul Plotnik, but he has no way to test it after fixing it. Add in the costs of shipping and I might as well buy a nice transfer box or something to run to my PC or Mac G4. Let me know what you all think.
Thanks,
Tom in NJ
Topic: Archive Python DDS drive dead? (Read 1282 times)