Tapes that don't load

[seanmcmanus]

I've been loading a few tapes and for the first time I'm finding that some of them don't load now, usually the ones with fancy fast loaders. Other tapes do load fine and they've been stored all together and well looked after for the last 40 years or so.

My question is: is there anything worth trying to see if these tapes can be made to work? Is it worth running a head cleaner tape or fiddling with the azimuth alignment with a tiny screwdriver, or anything else? Or should I just accept they were never going to last forever, and their time has come? The software is mostly preserved online, but it's nice to play from the original tapes on the original hardware.