"Less than" key and PET tape drive, again

I wish everybody a happy 2025. Also I can take the opportunity to point
at my VHDL PET for the Mega-65 hardware at
https://github.com/Rhialto/PET_MEGA65 (project is in progress, not
finished).

I think I asked here before if people knew about the effect on a PET
(possibly only orginal ROM set) where if you press the < key (less than)
while loading from tape, it prints < chars on the screen when there is
"something" on the tape. I am fairly sure I saw that in print somewhere
(guess: PBE magazine, or Compute!).

Anyway, I was idly browsing through old Compute!s and I found:


APPARENT MALFUNCTION OF THE < KEY - Jim Butterfield

In many PETs, the less-than (<) key will appear to be dead if cassette
tape drive #1 is disconnected.

If you have to run without a tape drive, you might like to make up a
plus[sic] for the tape edge connector, Putting a ground on the input line
(connecting pins A-1 and D-4- on the cassette edge connector) should
make the problem disappear. 

Source:
https://archive.org/details/1980-01-compute-magazine/page/82/mode/2up

I may even have posted this before but I can't find it right now. It
does seem to indicate *some* connection between the two...

But whyyyy?

Now that I'm thinking about it - maybe it was not literally while
LOADing but just pressing the < key and PLAY would do it?

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert                            <rhialto/at/falu.nl>
\X/ There is no AI. There is just someone else's work.           --I. Rose