In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
dave wrote:


Have tried with a friend's old recoder and we are getting two "tracks"
palying at once ie two stes of sounds played simultaneously.

Chances are that your friend's recorder was stereo but that the tapes were
recorded on a mono recorder. So you used the 2 tracks for two independent
recordings - but they are being played back together. If my old mono machine
still works, I may be able to do something with them - but not until the end
of the month.

Whereabouts in UK are you?
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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In article ,
Set Square wrote:
Have tried with a friend's old recoder and we are getting two "tracks"
palying at once ie two stes of sounds played simultaneously.

Chances are that your friend's recorder was stereo but that the tapes
were recorded on a mono recorder. So you used the 2 tracks for two
independent recordings - but they are being played back together. If my
old mono machine still works, I may be able to do something with them -
but not until the end of the month.

Just to add I can transfer any tape or record to any other format as
required.
With DBX, Dolby A, B, C, SR. '8' tracks no problem. Elcasette too. Even
the Lear Jet '4' track.

C'mon - give me a challenge. Even wax cylinders.;-)

--
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Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Just to add I can transfer any tape or record to any other format as
required.
With DBX, Dolby A, B, C, SR. '8' tracks no problem. Elcasette too. Even
the Lear Jet '4' track.

C'mon - give me a challenge. Even wax cylinders.;-)

In the 60s there was another cassette format competing with the Philips
Compact Cassette. German I think - Grundig? - BASF? - someone like
that...

--
Andy

In article ,
Andy Wade wrote:
In the 60s there was another cassette format competing with the Philips
Compact Cassette. German I think - Grundig? - BASF? - someone like
that...

That one I haven't seen. Elcassette was IIRC a Sony system using larger
cassettes and running at 3 3/4 ips.

--
*Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all?"

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

Just to add I can transfer any tape or record to any other format as
required.
With DBX, Dolby A, B, C, SR. '8' tracks no problem. Elcasette too. Even
the Lear Jet '4' track.

I think I have some stuff on a bubble memory chip somewhere.
Its just the chip but I think its intact.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andy Wade wrote:

In the 60s there was another cassette format competing with the Philips
Compact Cassette. German I think - Grundig? - BASF? - someone like
that...

That one I haven't seen. Elcassette was IIRC a Sony system using larger
cassettes and running at 3 3/4 ips.

I always thought the compact cassette came out in 73, shortly after 8
tracks in 71.

The one that always captured my imagination was an A4 sheet recorder. I
dont know its trade name, but it was a magnetically coated A4 sheet of
paper/plastic, with a head that recorded like a vinyl record - quite
possibly at non constant linear speed. I saw one years ago, but no-one
seems to have seen or heard of them. Dont remember how long a side
lasted, but I dont expect it was too long! Hardly surprising they didnt
catch on, but would be useful for large libraries of very short
recordings. Not that I can think of any use for sucha thing...


NT

On 10 Oct 2005 08:20:19 -0700,it is alleged that
spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:

[snip]

The one that always captured my imagination was an A4 sheet recorder. I
dont know its trade name, but it was a magnetically coated A4 sheet of
paper/plastic, with a head that recorded like a vinyl record - quite
possibly at non constant linear speed. I saw one years ago, but no-one
seems to have seen or heard of them. Dont remember how long a side
lasted, but I dont expect it was too long! Hardly surprising they didnt
catch on, but would be useful for large libraries of very short
recordings. Not that I can think of any use for sucha thing...


Probably not the same device, but sounds similar in principle to this?
http://www.ftldesign.com/Timex/

--
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- Ken Olson, President of DEC, 1977

Andy Wade said
In the 60s there was another cassette format competing with the Philips
Compact Cassette. German I think - Grundig? - BASF?

Yes you're quite right. I was presented with one of those in the early
1970's. The owner asked if I could modify it to take Phillips
cassettes. Obviously that wasn't possible.

From what I recall, it looked very similar to the Phillips Compact
Cassette, but was slightly bigger and totally incompatible. Although
being Grundig, it was beautifully engineered.

wrote:

I always thought the compact cassette came out in 73,

About 10 years before that. Around '62 or '63 - perhaps
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP...

--
Andy

wrote:

From what I recall, it looked very similar to the Phillips Compact
Cassette, but was slightly bigger and totally incompatible. Although
being Grundig, it was beautifully engineered.

That's right - "slightly bigger and totally incompatible" sums it up to
a T. I had a school friend who had such a machine and kept going on
about how much better than it was than the Philips, which was probably
true, c.f. Betamax v. VHS...

Thanks for confirming that is was Grundig.

The Elcaset I well remember; a nice idea but much too late. It gets a
mention in Wikipedia's list of commercial failures at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_flops

--
Andy

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something
like:

I always thought the compact cassette came out in 73, shortly after 8
tracks in 71.

The CC was definitely out before the 8-track; afair, the usual format
wars were taking place between the manufacturers and the 8-track was
just another format with the usual pros and cons. Philips then trumped
everybody by dropping its licence fee for the production of CCs to near
zero.

Suddenly everybody started making CCs and the rest is history. The CC
wasn't all that great, but it was simple and mostly reliable and the
subsequent decades saw a tremendous improvement on its qualities.
--

Dave

wrote:
On 10 Oct,
wrote:
I always thought the compact cassette came out in 73, shortly after 8
tracks in 71.
I had a Phillips cassette recorder long before '73, and I don't get things
when they are new technology. I've still got it somewhere, despite it being
ripped out of my car and stolen in '75.

Must have been long before. I remember when in primary school a student
teacher with one of these latest compact cassette portables using it in
a class. Battery operated and mono, that would have been before '66. The
pre recorded cassettes were around almost from the beginning but did not
take off for a few years. The oldest pre-recorded tapes in my collection
date from around 1975.


--
David Clark

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