DJ'ing was a lot harder then.
Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#12I make arrowheads for my DIY bow from bottle glass and stone because I want to know how it was like hunting thousands of years ago. I see little children having curiosity about those "cassetes" thing, but it is a five minutes thing. I actually lived casettes and HATE them. I sold all my collection, burned the piece of furniture that held it in a night of San Juan fire. Great memories (the fire and the party on the be…
> I see little children having curiosity about those "cassetes" thing, but it is a five minutes thing.
Oh, cassette tapes are great for people with kids! Unlike CDs or vinyl, you can hand over the collection with only limited risk of damage, as they are substantially scratchproof and unbreakable even when used as ballistic projectiles or impromptu teething devices. Durable medium!
(Occasionally one will have its guts ripped out, though. Nothing's foolproof.)
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#13Maybe OT, but i remember the "power of tape" when i was 10 in 1987, when an italian public radio broadcasted a full videogame (compressed by "turbo loader") every day and it was possible to record and play it on that beautiful commodore 64!
I seem to recall reading that the BBC did the same for the BBC Micro, although I can't find a reference now. Waiting half an hour for a game to load just to find the tape had got corrupted right near the end ("R Tape Loading Error" on the ZX Spectrum I grew up with) was one of the aspects I less fondly remember!
You might be thinking of software on ceefax: they had pages in the high numbers which contained gibberish to the viewer but which could be read by a BBC Micro with teletext adapter
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seem to recall reading that the BBC did the same for the BBC Micro, although I can't find a reference now. Waiting half an hour for a game to load just to find the tape had got corrupted right near the end ("R Tape Loading Error" on the ZX Spectrum I grew up with) was one of the aspects I less fondly remember!
You might be thinking of software on ceefax: they had pages in the high numbers which contained gibberish to the viewer but which could be read by a BBC Micro with teletext adapter
They also, as I remember, used to broadcast data at the top of the picture (possibly just about off-screen) during 'The Computer Programme' or one of its follow-ups, that a BBC Micro could decipher with some kind of dongle.
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#15I make arrowheads for my DIY bow from bottle glass and stone because I want to know how it was like hunting thousands of years ago. I see little children having curiosity about those "cassetes" thing, but it is a five minutes thing. I actually lived casettes and HATE them. I sold all my collection, burned the piece of furniture that held it in a night of San Juan fire. Great memories (the fire and the party on the be…
> I see little children having curiosity about those "cassetes" thing, but it is a five minutes thing. Oh, cassette tapes are great for people with kids! Unlike CDs or vinyl, you can hand over the collection with only limited risk of damage, as they are substantially scratchproof and unbreakable even when used as ballistic projectiles or impromptu teething devices. Durable medium! (Occasionally one will have its guts…
But even then it's usually not strong enough to e.g. serve as a strangulation device a younger brother might employ on a older, yet not much bigger one. Or so I've heard.
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#16Maybe OT, but i remember the "power of tape" when i was 10 in 1987, when an italian public radio broadcasted a full videogame (compressed by "turbo loader") every day and it was possible to record and play it on that beautiful commodore 64!
I seem to recall reading that the BBC did the same for the BBC Micro, although I can't find a reference now. Waiting half an hour for a game to load just to find the tape had got corrupted right near the end ("R Tape Loading Error" on the ZX Spectrum I grew up with) was one of the aspects I less fondly remember!
The BBC Micro had a port for a light pen.
There was a small rubber sucker attachment that you could stick to a TV screen, with the light pen attached. The BBC (tv station) had a programme (probably MicroLive) that would overlay a flashing block on a small section of the screen. The light pen would read that flashing and you'd have a small program.
Here's someone talking about it:
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2014/02/18/ian_mcnau...
The BBC (and Sinclair, and possibly Amstrad) did a lot to make computing accessible.
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#17I would like to see MiniDisc get the same attention. Guess that'll never happen again as it was always a bit niche while tape was as mainstream as it can get. Ok it's digital and somewhat more expensive but apart from that it imo is very similar (easy to record, share, portable) yet has much advantages over tape (noise, portables last way longer, medium does not lose signal under normal circumstances, less mechanical parts, higher density in same form factor)
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#18The attraction to mix-tapes for me was the artwork. They had this "college band" vibe to them, where someone had cut out art from a magazine, or maybe drew something in pen & ink, then used transfer letters to put a title on it, and ran it through a photocopier until it had a street grunge to it, and looked like something you didn't want your parents to know you had.
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seem to recall reading that the BBC did the same for the BBC Micro, although I can't find a reference now. Waiting half an hour for a game to load just to find the tape had got corrupted right near the end ("R Tape Loading Error" on the ZX Spectrum I grew up with) was one of the aspects I less fondly remember!
The BBC Micro had a port for a light pen. There was a small rubber sucker attachment that you could stick to a TV screen, with the light pen attached. The BBC (tv station) had a programme (probably MicroLive) that would overlay a flashing block on a small section of the screen. The light pen would read that flashing and you'd have a small program. Here's someone talking about it: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum…
The flashing block was "4 Computer Buffs" on Channel 4 - you can see them describe the process here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKmu68URUeI
I recall seeing a torrent of the full series a while back - I'd like to think that it's probably still possible to decode the programs even today. :)
4 Computer Buffs also transmitted some software as audio, usually over teletext pages or the test card, while the channel was off air - again, see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4gRgcnj8lg
One of the BBC programmes - either 'The Computer Programme' or 'Making The Most Of The Micro' transmitted a BBC Micro program as audio, too, but they intentionally kept it very short so as not to offend viewers who didn't like the noise.
That said, they lengthened the broadcast as a result of transmitting the program at 300 baud - they did tell everyone at home to make sure they typed *TAPE 3 (i.e. to crank the loading speed down to 300 baud rather than the Beeb's normal 1200 baud), presumably to strengthen the chances of some usable data actually making it through. :)
Re: Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World
#20I thought it'd be about software tapes, but I'm not surprised - vinyl records are even older and more fragile in many ways, and yet there's still plenty of interest in them, so why not cassette tape.
That's a bit different, though. Of the popular mediums from the last 50 years, cassette tapes are by far the worst in terms of sound quality. Particularly, the noise floor of a tape is absolutely horrible for anything but constant-volume loud recordings. Ever tried to listen to a delicate classical passage on tape? "hissssssssss...". Vinyl would fare far better.
So I'm actually pretty surprised to see a revival of interest in tapes. But I get it: its not about the sound quality. Its about the physicality of the container, about the process of making mix tapes, etc...
(Note: there are a lot of things you can do to drastically improve the sound quality of a tape: buy better quality tape, record at high speed, use DBX noise reduction (dynamic range compression), etc. But this article is talking about the bottom of the barrel: cheap tape which can be played in anyone's walkman).