Step Into the Wayback Machine - Cassette Tapes

[nevets88]

Remember these? They're making a comeback.

 

[DeadMan]

I think I speak for my generation when I say, what the hell are cassettes?

[colin007]

It's funny, there are still songs that I will hear to this day and in my head I anticipate the scratch or the glitch where the tape was damaged. 

[Patch]

I started from scratch recordings. Reel. to reel stuff. Graduated from that to 8 tracks, then cassettes cds, and now my phone. 

Anyone remember the song "Alley Oop"? 

[iacas]

I made so many tapes of radio songs and Pirates games. Loved that I could "record" from the radio.

[Vinsk]

Damn that’s some nostalgia there! Rewinding with a pencil to save the battery in the Walkman! And I remember when we had the double sided cassette players and could copy tapes! Such sorcery!

5 hours ago, colin007 said:

It's funny, there are still songs that I will hear to this day and in my head I anticipate the scratch or the glitch where the tape was damaged. 

That’s so cool! I know exactly what you’re saying. And with mix tapes I listened to so many times...when I hear a song from back then...I always expect the next song on my mix to play. 

[Shindig]

Okay, Erik beat me to talking about recording from the radio, so I have to tell a different story.

I had the bizarre period of time where I had access to mp3s on my computer but not to a CD burner, but my computer audio went out through a stereo that also had an audio tape player.  So for about two years of my life, if I wanted to listen to my mp3s in the car, I had to put them onto an audio tape ... which had to be recorded in real time by playing the file on my computer and pressing record on the stereo.

The alternative was a device that had an audio tape that went into my car's audio tape player and plugged into the headphone jack of my mp3 player device ... but that thing only held 32 MB, barely enough for a short commute.

I wonder how many people in the world ever moved mp3s onto audio tape, but I bet I'm in a fairly small group. 

[Warren Zevon]

To the younger generation unfamiliar with said cassettes, in case of emergency you can rewind them with a pencil or pen.

[RussUK]

4 hours ago, iacas said:

I made so many tapes of radio songs and Pirates games. Loved that I could "record" from the radio.

Still have 2 briefcases full of tapes with games for the Sinclair Spectrum 48k, each has about 20 games per tape and there are 50 to a case. We used to rent games from the library and make a copy if they were good.

Those were the days.

[boogielicious]

And, guess what happens when you put a Led Zeppelin tape into a Wang 2200 computer that stored programs on cassettes? 

[CarlSpackler]

Wayback?!!! It wasn’t THAT long ago, was it?

[dennyjones]

7 hours ago, Vinsk said:

That’s so cool! I know exactly what you’re saying. And with mix tapes I listened to so many times...when I hear a song from back then...I always expect the next song on my mix to play. 

+1

[chilepepper]

I had an 8 track. Got good at splicing tapes the player ate. 

[CarlSpackler]

9 hours ago, iacas said:

I made so many tapes of radio songs and Pirates games. Loved that I could "record" from the radio.

Nothing worse than the DJ talking into the beginning of the song. I swear they did that to piss me off.

[Groucho Valentine]

90% of my knowledge of cassette tapes comes from playing Metal Gear Solid 5.