Thanks to everyone for the comments, I'm pleased its been of interest.
Marty, sorry to disappoint but cant afford the power to run the 8 7-24 so security is gonna have to be a dog.
pontus,
the TTY is a "Data Dynamics" on the case but its a standard ASR33 inside, had been sitting for 25 years or so, needed a clean , lube and the
obligatory type hammer replacement but now seems basically ok.
Yes the squeak is from drive 0, the left , though both will do it now and again, seems to be the tape just touching the inside of the spool when you are at the 50 50 point as it were.
Dave,
Left hand drive, set as drive 0 has the system tape and is used to boot and run the operating system ,OS 8.
The other drive, set as 1, has a data tape on it, and the light flashing program is on this tape, I could have put this program on the system tape but loading would have taken a lot longer.
The tapes themselves are 40 years old, the system tape I reformatted and rebuilt last year but that data tape had the lights program written to it in 1982 !!, these DECtapes are pretty long lived.
The "patch cord" is a cat 5 but i'm just using it as 8 singles, well 6 TTL and a ground. I tend to use cat5 for other stuff not just networking, its handy for general control as here or for CCTV using a balum, you just gotta check VERY carefully before you plug in the RJ45
Dave