Tony Duell wrote: Only two years? I'd be surprised if typical use wouldn't let it last for a lot longer than that, say five at least. Absolutely. I need to sort my player out actually, as it's started not rewinding the tapes all the way back in before ejecting them, but I'd much rather figure out how to service it myself and get the parts than I would get a completely new one. Time is not free - but the choices tend to boil down to: 1) Take older well-built product which does exactly what I need, and spend a small sum in parts and maybe four hours of time to make it good for another five years. 2) Spend a larger sum and eight hours of time shopping around for a replacement (which probably *doesn't* do exactly what I need), then throwing it out and repeating the exercise ad-nauseum every couple of years because it's virtually impossible to service the modern version. That's without the environmental issues; the amount of good-quality repairable stuff which just gets thrown into a hole in the ground really p*sses me off - but that's another story :) There are parallels with all sorts of goods, whether technical or not. For anyone reasonably capable at doing general repairs to things, the second option just doesn't add up in the long run. cheers Jules

Fred Cisin wrote: No idea really :) I suppose I'd expect a VCR to do maybe 1000 hours or something before needing some kind of service (other than just cleaning the heads). Maybe it's comparable to something like a QIC drive (in that there are parallels in terms of tape making contact with head assembly, belt drive, various rubber parts that may be prone to wear etc.). It'd be interesting to know what the expected lifetime for such a drive was for the head / pulleys / belt etc.

On 19/12/06 23:09, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: Nope, I do too, and I'm still kicking myself for passing up a machine and a box of tapes at a car boot sale many moons ago! (I used to kick myself lots for passing up on a very cheap Amiga 4000-030 on the grounds that it had no keyboard, but I've been blessed with a much better one since....must get 3.1 ROMs) Fantastic engineering which is why I like 'em, and it's probably the reason they failed in the marketplace. Oh yeah, and they liked chewing tapes, and the tapes were expensive AND needed turning over :) -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

Alexandre Souza wrote: I hear that so often about Laserjet 4 series printers. Time and again someone asks what the best laser printer is to get, and there'll be a flurry of people telling them to get a used Laserjet 4. Practically bomb-proof those things are. Possibly the last good-quality product that HP built? :-) cheers Jules

Apologies for this, but..... On 20/12/06 00:05, "Alexandre Souza" <alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br> wrote: Only half a million? :) Some of the LJ4's we look after have done 1.5m pages with no problems..... At this point I should say I work for a fully accredited DEC/Compaq/HP maintenance company so we see a lot of printers. The most troublesome are the newer ones, the so-called 'consumer grade' ones. Since HP won't sell maintenance parts of these printers to the likes of us trained professionals we have to rely on their own contracted service monkeys to 'fix' them. For the last 3 weeks (Weeks!) we've been battling with HP 'service' engineers for a Laserjet 3500; we tell them what's wrong with it (because we know), they turn up with the wrong bits and/or spend hours poring over it because they've not seen one in the field before. Thanks, HP, the printer company! After said engineers have left and most of our customer's printer doesn't function correctly aside from printing a demo page I strip it down and rebuild it this morning (in the UK this is known as the 'bollocks to it' approach) and find a couple of things that both HP contractors didn't do correctly, ie put it back together correctly. Merely 20 years ago the maintenance engineer's heads would've been on blocks if they'd not done their job properly, as would the manufacturing company. Don't get me started on the self-destructing properties of the 'new' Laserjet 4250/4350 fusers..... Massively off-topic, apologies for the rant! -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

On 20/12/06 12:31, "Alexandre Souza" <alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br> wrote: Briefly (and OT of course) the top roller in the fuser is a thin foil and it manages to tear itself with not even a hint of user mangling. Once torn it can drop bits of metal into the rest of the printer...... We don't know why or how it does it, HP don't know either. -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

Tony Duell wrote: Ran into that trying to get a new one-way clutch for my Tek Phaser 560. Even though it's on a bit that sticks out when you pull the paper-pick mechanism out, apparently it's a workshop job because you need to remove a cover and then (gasp) *a circuit board*! Woooow! So of course, I removed the cover, removed the little PCB with the photosensor thing, removed the pingfsckit end of the shaft and drew off the one way clutch. The grease had dried into a solid sticky mass, so I soaked it in some WD40 until I could separate the two bits. Now Tektronix say it needs to be very special grease (again, only available to Tek workshops), so I tried Castrol LM since I had a huge tub of it just fine. Oh, saying that it will doubtless seize up again the next time I print (Sod's Law) but it takes 10 minutes to sort. Gordon