[Coco] History of Tandy/Radio Shack Cassette Recorders

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 16 December 2003 09:11, Perry M Dueck wrote:
>I seem to recall coming across some info on a Tandy CCR-83 Cassette
>Recorder, although I've never actually seen one. What's the
> difference between the CCR-83 and it's predecessors, the CCR-82 and
> CCR-81 ?
>
>I do own the Tandy labeled CCR-81, and I remember my cousion owning
> the earlier Radio Shack TRS-80 labeled CCR-81, and one of my high
> school classmates owned a Radio Shack TRS-80 labeled CCR-82 (much
> smaller and somewhat different than the CCR-81).  I vaguely seem to
> recall that the CCR-81 appeared to be a bit more reliable for
> storeing and retrieving data than the smaller CCR-82, but perhaps
> that classmate's CCR-82 just needed a head cleaning or something.
>
>I've also come across a few different  pictures on the web that show
> a "battleship grey" CCR-81, to match the original CoCo 1....how
> common were those and were those ever sold here in North America or
> just overseas?
>
>I also recall a black Radio Shack CTR-80 cassette recorder which my
> junior high school used with it's TRS-80 Model III systems for a
> while until they installed 5.25" floppy drives.
>
>best regards, Perry

Generally speaking Perry, all of those were pretty poor recorders as 
they all were designed with "DC" or permanent magnets for erasure and 
recording bias.  That raises the background noise on the tape by 
about 30db, and also restricts the maximum recording level by another 
10 db or so.  The net result was that while you could pick a voice 
out of the noise and recognize the speaker, the computer had much 
more trouble, making it qwuite an exersize to get the recording and 
playback levels optimized.

The only advantage they had was the builtin motor on/off controls 
which allowed a program to retrieve more data as it needed it.  The 
only such recorder I ever had that had AC bias and erasure was an old 
GE that resembled the CCR-81, but cost me about 50 bucks more.  
Because it was higher priced, and wasn't touted as a data recorder, 
sales were predictably poor and they never made another when that one 
was sold out.  My 2nd wife "loaned" it to somebody, probably for 
about a 20 dollar bill, and I never saw it again no matter how many 
times I asked about it.  I finally "loaned" her a buss ticket to 
anyplace I wasn't. 

If you want bulletproof data recording and recovery, use a decent hi 
grade ferrite or even a metal tape in your hi-fi stereo casette deck 
and run the start-stop controls by hand.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III at 500mhz 320M
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.