Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

[der Mouse]

> Companies don't survive if they make consumer products that wear out
> in "a year and day".

Sure they do, provided it doesn't lose them too much.

This is commonly the case in many branches of consumer electronics,
where a comparatively large fraction of the customer base heat-seeks[%]
more often than that anyway.

> But if you did a study of current state of the art electronics, you
> would find it to be far superior to that of 20 years ago.  Even if it
> won't provide a maintenance manual.

Actually, for him (and to some extent for me), not providing a
maintenance manual makes it inferior *per se* - it has to be enough
better to make up for that and then some to be counted as better.

[%] See http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/heatseeker.html.

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