Omron Sysmac M5R

So I've been thrown a bit of a curly one here and hopefully some of the more, shall we say experienced, experts on this site might be able to point me in the right direction.

My customer has an old CNC using a Sysmac M5R PLC that we need to diagnose a problem on. A cursory browse of the Internet yields a user document for this PLC (dated Dec 82) that details a required programming console utilising a cassette tape recorder! Last time I used one of those for anything other than listening to mix tapes in the car was for loading up Lemonade Stand on my mates C64 in the glory days of '80s gaming.

So can anyone tell me how I can get to the program on this thing? Can it be connected to a laptop somehow? Our local Omron people haven't been particularly forthcoming. I doubt they've even seen anything like it.

Ha - cut my teeth on the like of those. Surprised it is still going - should have been replaced a long time ago. You will need the programmer at least - is it on the front of the PLC? If you require a manual search for W22-E1-3 at an Omron website. If you cannot find it I have a scanned copy here electronically.

Thanks Bob, that's what I thought. Now to locate a programmer...