Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

[Alexandre Souza]

>>     A VAX isn't useful today. This is a toy. I'll not even think about 
>> using
> Well, there are plenty that would disagree with you there!.
> Firstly, being 'a toy' is useful. It gives the owner pleasure. And
> there's nothing wrong with that.
> And secondly, if you have some application (hardware or software) that
> runs on a particular machine, then it may well take significant time
> and/or money to move it to a more modern machine even if that modern
> machine rnss faster. It may well be worth keeping the old machine running
> as long as possible. There's a lot more to computing than processor speed!

    Tony, you are a smart man and I'm sure you understood me. Of course that 
if it is still working for a determined solution, it should be kept working. 
I just generalized and I apologize for that.

> An example : I've recently been working on some HP9000/200 series
> machines. I don't dispute that a modern PC will run a lot faster than the
> 8MHz 68000 in the HP. But the HP has a truely wonderful range of I/O
> cards available (I wish I had more of them), it has IEEE-488 as standard,
> and runs a powerful BASIC that can use all these I/O facilities. If I'd
> got some kind of automated test set-up ssing one of those machines, it
> would coast a lot of time and money to move it to a PC, even if similar
> I/O cards were available. It would almost certainly be cheaper to keep
> the the HP running.

    But surely you wouldn't buy one to create a datalogging system.

> It's also amazing how many people don't realise that Philips made
> computers. Or eduactional kits (electronics and mechanics).

    I have some here, a VG8235 (MSX 2.0) and a Odyssey² (known in Brazil 
just as "odyssey")...very good machines these philips :D