1/2" tape cleaners?

[der Mouse]

>> Are there good Linux packages for dealing with foreign tapes, such
>> as handling variable block sizes?
> dd will handle variable block sizes on a per-tape-file basis.  I'm
> sure there are other utilities that can as well.

My own favourite is copytape, which works well with tape drives that
fit the Unix model of stream-of-tape-blocks.  (It works less well, but
better than not at all, with drives like the old Sun quarter-inch
drives that are not a stream of variable-sized blocks but rather a
stream of fixed-size blocks which the driver is willing to
transparently reblock to any multiple of that fixed size.)

ftp.rodents.montreal.qc.ca:/mouse/local/src/copytape/ is the source I
have (which is a slight tweakage of the version I got).

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