Allison wrote: an HP 9144 tape drive. He says that there's a hard roller inside the tape cartridge, and there's a softer (rubber?) roller in the drive that pushes against it, pulling the tape along. Apparently the softer rollers tend to turn to "goo" after many years. He's been working to recover some archived files from the beginnings of the company he works for, mostly for historical interest, and his last tape drive recently succumbed to the "goo" problem. Anyone have any replacement rollers that would be in any better shape, or any suggestions for alternatives? Thanks! OK, similar response for an HP 2761A optical mark reader? One issue here is that I don't know the diameter of the original roller. http://rikers.org/gallery/hardware/20050415_134519 Perhaps someone has a service manual for this reader? Looks like Jeff Moffatt had one for the interface card. http://oscar.taurus.com/~jeff/2100/iocards/iocards2.txt -- Tim Riker - http://rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun!