Misread the post, sorry.
Sony R500s are decent machines if he has that one, but much below that will not be up to the task of reproducing hundreds of DATs, and the R500 was common, so parts are still out there.
The Sony 7030 were amazing machines, and I had two, but sadly, they are rare to locate (they were nearly $8,000 in the day), and consequently parts are not available. I shopped eBay for over a year for parts before tossing it in the recycling bin at my local electronics electronic recycling center.