I remember now this Realistic cassette player ran hot. Apparently it's common for tape decks to run hot, but this seems excessive to me. It burned your hand touching the case. There might be something else wrong causing it to overheat that much, or other damage caused by the heat. Ran across a video to replace belts in a Sony that didn't have so much junk inside. I think that's because it had to be connected to a receiver/amplifier, whereas the Realistic is all in one. My parents bought a Sony stereo system with a cassette component like that. It doesn't work either—neither Play nor FF/RW. So I tore it apart this morning. All the belts and pulleys are out front. All of the belts are melted also. I'll work on this one instead. With the other system you had to take off the motor and the whole player/recorder unit to replace the belts. This one you only have to take off the motor. Don't even need to unhook any of the wires. I ordered a pack of square belts. They should arrive Friday. The dining room table is now covered with parts of 2 cassette players, a receiver, AM/FM tuner, 2 speakers, screw drivers, and some dishes. Until at least Friday. Probably all summer.
So 8-track tapes came out around 1965? I graduated from high school the year before and was too busy to think about things like that. Glad I missed it. First tape recorder I bought was 1973 and it was cassette by then. The next thing I remember was DVR tapes from the TV. My parents only had an antenna in Florida and I used to tape movies from Turner Classics and send them down in the mail. She brought all of them up here to Georgia and my father built a shelf just for them 4" deep. Covers half a wall in one room. It saves no space in the room to throw them away. So I haven't.
I had an RCA 4 track cartridge Recorder similar to the one below. Cartridges and Cassettes (1958-65) Launch of tape cartridges by RCA spurred companies worldwide into developing tape cartridges, cassettes and "magazine tapes" under various names and based on different standards. The common feature of these products was, unlike manually threaded reel-to-reel systems, simply inserting the encased tape into a tape player and pressing a button could operate the new systems. People without technical backgrounds could operate it very easily. Naturally, the machine itself could also be miniaturized. 1958 RCA cartridge. It was the first attempt to put reel-to-reel tape in cartridge form. Dimensions: 5 x 7 1/8 x 1/2 inches (127 x 197 x 13 mm). The cartridges were reversible and either side could be played. Tape speed was either 3.75 ips resulting in 30 minutes of audio on 0.25 inch tape or 1 7/8 ips selected by a small lever. RCA Records made an early attempt at making this a popular pre-recorded music format. However it turned out to be a major "Flop" in that regard. Cartridges would have prices ranging from $4.95 for a 20 minute tape to $9.95 for an hour RCA was slow to produce machines for the home market and to license recorded music, and the format disappeared from the market by 1964. http://vintagecassettes.com/_history/history.htm
At least it's a nice looking outfit. According to the video below a 4-track must have been stereo on each of 2 sides? Why is an 8-track tape called an 8 track tape? .. (I didn't know any of this.)
Amazon, or whoever, combined both the cassette belt orders into one, supposed to arrive tomorrow. If I get this tape deck working there are two more hurdles: 1. Set up the tape deck and the receiver in the vicinity of the pc 2. Find a cable that connects a line out port on the receiver to a line in on the pc Then you are supposed to be able to just start playing the tape and use a free software package, called Audacity, to convert to digital on the pc. I've already downloaded that. At least it is all indoors work.
Found this rubber thing laying on the floor of the cabin about 2 weeks ago. It is a Ribbit Frog Fishing Lure.
I wish. Some passerby left it. I just thought it was cute. I leave the door unlocked, so they won't break a window to get inside. Satisfies their curiosity. Nothing in there worth anything now, except the refrigerator.
I bought an 8 track recorder in 1973. It was a GE. I believe it cost me around $50 new. I still have a couple of cassette recorders that are stereo components (meaning they require an amplifier to play.) A very nice Dual and a TEAC.
This cassette recorder is a component of a Sony outfit that has some special dedicated connectors. I've never seen this before (on the receiver).
I was gonna comment on that adapter you bought. I've never seen those. I've done my share of soldering wires to those mini plugs...and to the 1/4" phono plugs. As an aside, I still have my very first receiver. It's a Lafayette LR1200. It even came with a schematic.
I need to get a soldering iron and learn how to do that. I remember when solid state stuff first came out. It was mysterious. Everyone said, if something solid state goes bad, might as well throw it away. Can't be fixed. My first stereo was a combination turntable/radio from Radio Shack 1973. I kept it until about 3-4 years ago. Still have the MC1000 speakers. I loved that thing. Did you know there is a website with Radio Shack catalogs from 1939-2002? HERE 1973 catalog, p. 159
I got moved into the field of purchasing while working for a company that installed security & access control systems in office buildings. We installed a security system on every single suite in the buildings we did. Behind every suite's keylock was a tamper button. They had two terminals, and we paid a company 25¢ per terminal to solder on the wires so they were ready to go for our field installers. I got permission to do this task myself. I took home a case of 1,000 terminals and soldered a pair of leads onto every single one of them (2,000 solder joints). I clamped my Weller solder gun in my Workmate, held the trigger down with a tie-wrap, precut the leads out of a spool of 2 conductor cable, cracked open a beer, turned on the TV and went to work. I made $500 doing that job...this was when I was making $10,000/year, so that was real money. This was in 1977. I still have that Weller...and the Workmate. I'm so cheap, I probably saved that tie-wrap, too. If you're gonna get a solder gun so you can replace components, you may as well get one of these at the same time: It's a solder puller/solder pullit/solder sucker/solder remover/buncha other names. When you are removing a component (or just want to extract excess solder), you melt the solder and suck it away one joint at a time. Then you just lift the component out as freely as it was when first inserted. The sucker works by pushing the spring-loaded plunger down until it locks. When you want to suck the solder, you push the button and the plunger rapidly releases, creating a suction and drawing the solder into it. When you push the plunger back down to reset the sucker, the solidified solder you just extracted gets pushed out the end. As the guy in the video says,it's good just for removing excess solder when you're doing a solder job. Some folks prefer to use desoldering wick to absorb the excess (or to remove components), but I like the sucker: Regardless, you'll need one or the other.