Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

Billy, I think this is the point: Useful life cycle. A VAX isn't useful today. This is a toy. I'll not even think about using a 11/750 to run a payroll or calculating some numbers. There are better, faster, cheaper options today. But we can talk about my loved HP4Plus. This printer serves me perfectly. There is no feature I need that this printer doesn't have! It even has a network port, so I can use that from any of my networked computers without a printer server. It has a 600DPI (true) output, and prints nice graphics. Has lots of memory and runs without a hassle. Why should I buy another laser printer? The useful life cycle of my HP4 is something short of forever, I have no need to upgrade my printer. Maybe to a colour laser printer, but the cost of ownership is too high for my needs. So this HP4+ will be with me for a long time (and I have it for some 5 or 6 years already). I have the service manual and parts are cheap. I even have a personal stock of probable failures: Lamp, fuser roller, pressure roller, fuser roller gear, complete gear module, main motor and power supply. So it WILL last forever :) Lets jump to the other point of the rope: My XBOX. I have a 1.1 XBOX that I use as a videogame, youtube browser, PVP (personal video player), ftp server, etc. It serves me and has a good and warm place in my heart. I'll not have money for buying a ps3 or X360 soon, so I love to play Outrun 2006 on that. But what if it failures? There is no service manual, not so many parts avaiable (new) and microsoft will drop support to it soon. What will I do if my xbox broke? There is NO new product to replace it, so I'll not have my toy anymore (of course, I'll buy another used, but this is another subject). So it is a GOOD appliance, the lifecycle is short (less than 5-6 years) but I WANT to make this lifecycle longer. It is made to last 5, maybe 10 years. But I'm sure 20 years from now I'll still use and keep it, as I do with my Atari 2600. Catch the point? The "useful life cycle" of a product depends of how much you need or you love it, so it is better to have a way to repair it yourself :o) Greetings from Brazil Alexandre Souza PS: Philips? So let me tell you a history: Since my childhood I wanted to have the Trendset 20" tv set with RGB input. This is the most beautiful TV Philips made, and I still wanted to have one! So I got TWO (20CT6555 and 20CT6558, one is silver and another black. The former without stereo decoding, the last with it. Chassis is CTO) and **restored both**. Now I have a GREAT tv set where I can connect my Neo Geo, my Amiga and other toys directly in the SCART socket. Very few TVs in Brazil came with the SCART socket, so this TV has a high collectable market value, and it is, as I said, one of the most beautiful TV sets I've ever seen. The complete service manual and common parts avaiability made it easy to repair. And we are talking about a 20+ years set.