Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

Well, there are plenty that would disagree with you there!. Firstly, being 'a toy' is useful. It gives the owner pleasure. And there's nothing wrong with that. And secondly, if you have some application (hardware or software) that runs on a particular machine, then it may well take significant time and/or money to move it to a more modern machine even if that modern machine rnss faster. It may well be worth keeping the old machine running as long as possible. There's a lot more to computing than processor speed! An example : I've recently been working on some HP9000/200 series machines. I don't dispute that a modern PC will run a lot faster than the 8MHz 68000 in the HP. But the HP has a truely wonderful range of I/O cards available (I wish I had more of them), it has IEEE-488 as standard, and runs a powerful BASIC that can use all these I/O facilities. If I'd got some kind of automated test set-up ssing one of those machines, it would coast a lot of time and money to move it to a PC, even if similar I/O cards were available. It would almost certainly be cheaper to keep the the HP running. That is exactly how I feel about my old computers. They do all that I want. I don't need graphics, or a faster processor, or... Why should I upgrade? I'd still love to find one of the Philips G11-chassis sets from the mid 1970s with the Prestel unit underneath. Yes, an 'internet TV' long before there was an internet :-). No idea where I'd put it, though.. It's also amazing how many people don't realise that Philips made computers. Or eduactional kits (electronics and mechanics). -tony