Neither or nor?

Which one, if any, is correct?

-It turns out that the existing machine is not 'obsolete' nor are spare parts unavailable.
-It turns out that the existing machine is not 'obsolete' neither are spare parts unavailable.

I would go for the first. And wow, that's a wonderfully convoluted sentence, almost like something you'd read in my hideously convoluted essays (can't help it, for the sake of scientific precision and *ahem, ahem* clarity).

Heh - it is quite straightforward by my standards. And yes, I would also go with the first case out of the choices you provided, but I would actually slightly reword it as:

"It turns out that the existing machine neither is 'obsolete' nor has no spare parts available."

Travis's rewording is grammatically correct and semantically logical, but it is even more awkward than - and lacks the elegance of - the original.

Just my personal opinion, so please don't take offence ^^

I would use "nor" and not "neither", and I would put a comma after "obsolete".

If I were really, really dead set on using "neither" and did not want to use a comma, I would probably have to change the wording entirely to make the sentence into a list of two qualities being compared: "It turns out the existing machine is neither obsolete nor lacking in readily-available spare parts." And in that case I would use "is neither", not Travis's "neither is", which does sound a little awkward to my ears, too. (I could also say "lacking for", which was actually my first choice.)

I agree with Uriel. His re-wording is how I would say it, too. But to be pedantic, I could support the second wording in the original post if it had a semi-colon before "neither".

That example seems like two separate but related thoughts written in a single sentence. So some sort of punctuation would be needed to indicate the "space" between the two thoughts. I wouldn't bet a whole lot of money on it, but the semi-colon seems appropriate for that.

All the rewordings seem to want to make a sentence containing a single thought that just so happens to deny two claims previously made about the machine.