There has been a minor resurgence in "personal cassette tape players" (known more widely by Sony brand name 'walkmen') The most disturbing thing is how bare-bones these new products are... falling *far* short of the walkmen of yore.
This one is $80, it has a USB-C rechargeable battery, but no song skipping fast forward, no bluetooth, auto-reverse... frankly it's exceptional for having both rewind AND fast forward.
I feel like a barbarian looking at the achievements of the ancients.
Bernie Does It For Harris reshared this.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I want a walkman that has *all* of the best old features AND a modern rechargeable battery, Bluetooth for my earbuds... and give me a little VFD display ...
But especially auto-reverse... that was the most magical aspect of tape players.
And I have all these tapes that were designed so you could "flip" them at certain points so the songs lined up in fun ways... Let me recapture the magic...
ersatzmaus
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to ersatzmaus • • •ersatzmaus
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to ersatzmaus • • •Marius
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Put an LCD screen behind a little window with a movie of spinning wheels, plus a little speaker making whirr noises.
And a camera with OCR that reads the name of your tape and downloads mp3s of the songs on that tape.
There is a Fisher price LP record player. In the old days, each record had bumps that worked on a spring driven music box. In the modern version, the player recognizes the record, then plays the associated song from internal memory.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to Marius • • •IDK... I feel like if it comes to this? I'd rather just move on. Let the dead tape stay dead and unplayed as their magnetic tape evaporates and fragments and becomes forgotten.
Let the bits be reclaimed by the magnetic fields of space... let the plastic turn to dust in the sun...
Michael Gemar
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •album series by William Basinski
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Steve Gisselbrecht
in reply to Marius • • •@Zamfr @ersatzmaus
A friend's daughter once commented at a party how cool that our stereo had a display on top that made it look like it was actually playing a vinyl record, and our friend had to explain to her that it was actually playing a vinyl record.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to ersatzmaus • • •@ersatzmaus
OMG the digital tape deck simulator exists!
The Original Stripey Goodness
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •The Original Stripey Goodness
in reply to The Original Stripey Goodness • • •every single current new cassette player uses the mechanical part from that one manufacturer.
And that manufacturer cannot produce auto-reverse for one reason or another I do not at the moment recall. It is apparently difficult enough that the money numbers do not work out in favor of... whatever. 🙁
I kinda wonder if it would make sense to get a really nice-condition vintage unit (either nice used or new old stock) which has the necessary mechanical features, and then hack in modern power and Bluetooth.
Bernie Does It For Harris reshared this.
Peter Mount
in reply to The Original Stripey Goodness • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Peter Mount • • •@peter @stripey
Kill me now.
Peter Mount
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •The Original Stripey Goodness
in reply to Peter Mount • • •It's not like the high-tonnage foundry technology which can probably never be done again without starting over...
Peter Mount
in reply to The Original Stripey Goodness • • •The Original Stripey Goodness
in reply to Peter Mount • • •Peter Mount
in reply to The Original Stripey Goodness • • •Nina Kalinina
in reply to Peter Mount • • •The new iteration of the experiment is on hold, too much other stuff happens in my life, but the current results of home wound tape heads aren't bad, I think!
boltzmann's basilisk
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •so much fantasy RPG stuff from the oughts was about people trying to rebuild after an old cataclysm that destroyed a brilliant ancient civilization and most of the really good tech is whatever they salvage from the ruins
never thought we'd live to see the most boring possible implementation of that
Ronnie Tucker
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Ronnie Tucker • • •@ronnietucker
I had a double deck boombox as a teen where the tapes went in the same slot side by side like a sandwich. They both had auto reverse so you could line up over 180 min of music with no repeats.
But also seeing the two tapes in the slot and the solid way it closed was so satisfying.
I can't even find a photo of this model of boombox online. I think it was Casio or Sharp. (it was not Sony)
trurl :unverified: ﾠ ﾠ ﾠ ﾠ ༽
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Nfoonf
in reply to trurl :unverified: ﾠ ﾠ ﾠ ﾠ ༽ • • •Growlph Ibex
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •boltzmann's basilisk
in reply to Growlph Ibex • • •imagining the rats or bedbugs or whatever gains sapience after us digging up our stuff and staring in bafflement at just what happened a few decades after 9/11 like
> We realised, of course, the great decadence of the Old Ones’ sculpture at the time of the tunnelling; and had indeed noticed the inferior workmanship of the arabesques in the stretches behind us. But now, in this deeper section beyond the cavern, there was a sudden difference wholly transcending explanation—a difference in basic nature as well as in mere quality, and involving so profound and calamitous a degradation of skill that nothing in the hitherto observed rate of decline could have led one to expect it.
Cait the Autocorrected Carrot
in reply to boltzmann's basilisk • • •Bravissima! Stolen directly from At the Mountains of Madness, unless I miss my guess. Perfect.
The Witch of Crow Briar
in reply to Cait the Autocorrected Carrot • • •boltzmann's basilisk
in reply to The Witch of Crow Briar • • •