Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

[Jules Richardson]

Tony Duell wrote:
> I can either spend $10 on a set of rubber parts and take an afternoon 
> putting them in (at which point, said VCR will be good for another 2 
> years)

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.

 > or I can spend $89 and take an afternoon going to the shop,
> bringing a new unit home, and figuring out how to connect it up and use 
> it. At which point I have a device assembled with lead-free solder, 
> soldered at too low a temperature, so it gets dry joints within a few 
> months. With plastic mechanical parts made from the cheapest plastic 
> imaginable that make a freebie toy look solid. I'd be lucky if that $89 
> machine lasted for a couple of weeks after the warrenty period...

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