Centauri Dreams' latest take on the subject
To quote:
New Scientist is running an interesting piece [subscription required for full access] on Slava Turyshev (JPL), who plans to investigate the so-called Pioneer Anomaly by re-flying the mission virtually. It’s a fascinating tale for various reasons, not the least of which is how close we came to losing much if not all of the precious Pioneer data.
For one thing, 400 reels of magnetic tapes housing information about the trajectories of the two spacecraft had to be saved from years of neglect and transferred to DVD.
Full article here:
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=688