[HP82161 digital cassette drive] No they won't (I have an HP82161 and several HX20s). The HX20 uses microcassette tapes, which is a standard created by one of the Japanese companies (Sanyo?) for dictating machines. Audio tapes work fine in the HX20, or at least they always have for me. The mechanical form of the cassette is identical. The HP82161 uses a special tape cassette. It's somewhat similar mechanically to the Philips minicassette (also used in dictating machines), but it's not identical to it. There are extra notches in the HP tape to prevent audio tapes from being used. The HP tapes have an internal mirror for optical EOT detection (like a QIC cartridge). I think the tape is different to normal audio tape. They are _no way_ the same as microcassettes. I believe that the HP cassettes were standard items at one time. The alignment tape (which I don't have :-() is supposed to be a Verbatim product, so I guess Verbatim made normal data cassettes as well. FWIW, the HP82161 tapes are hard to find (at least in the UK) (I have my unit for reading such tapes mostly that people send me -- I have exactly one scratch tape), so you might well find an HP calculator enthusiast would like them (and would pay a reasonable amount for them). -tony

I vote that workstation hardware older than 7 years old counts as a classic, if it's oddball enough. PA-RISC is pretty oddball in my opinion.

from ... yes ... Wayne State University (IIRC).