There is actually a homing routine built into the Galil, HM command. It does almost exactly what you describe, it's also easy to write a homing routine. That will be included in my software.
I shut my machine off, but I leave the computer and the Galil up just to keep the electronics temperature constant. The only time position is lost is on power fail. Even that is not a problem if you know where you parked the machine. The parking position values are saved in the parameters.
Sorry, I don't have any extra tape. There was an ebay vendor that had quite a bit of it.