Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

Christian Corti wrote: Do you think it's acceptable to be forced to live with faulty equipment because there's no way to "take back" bad or faulty design decisions? What people want and expect out of equipment has changed. If it hadn't, we'd all still be driving around in Morris Minors. That's actually a good example - it's impossible to achieve modern emissions figures from a car engine fitted with a carburettor, and there is a lot to go wrong in one. Fuel injection systems keep better track of mixture giving cleaner emissions and better economy, and there's less to go wrong. If anything does go wrong, it will tell you what's upset it. Look at household appliances, too - how much do you think it costs to make that big cam switch inside a washing machine? It's much cheaper to replace all that with a PIC microcontroller (most common MCU I've seen in washing machines) and a few triacs, maybe a relay or two. Furthermore, if it turns out that there's a problem (Hey, the half-hour wash cycle doesn't rinse properly!) it's easy to fix. Gordon.