[Coco] Coco Cassette interface help

[Dave Philipsen]

Well, perhaps the Sharp CE-152 tape recorder manufactured in the early 
80s was a bit ahead of its time then.  I'm pretty sure it sold for less 
than $100.  According to this article 
http://www.petervis.com/electronics%20guides/Sharp%20CE-152/Sharp%20CE-152.html 
the CE-152 used a NEC uPC1305C chip in it whose datasheet specifically 
shows generates erase bias for the head.  If you scroll down the page 
you'll see the specifications list with "Automatic erase bias".

Perhaps you are thinking of older tape decks that might have been 
produced in the 50s or 60s.  Cassettes debuted in the early 60s but 
didn't really become mainstream 'til around 1970 and later.  There 
probably are some portable recorders that did not provide erase head 
bias but my bet would be that most of them produced by the early 80s and 
later had the feature, even the cheaper ones.

Dave


On 2/28/2017 3:31 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> I have never seen a cassette deck selling for under a hundred dollar bill
> that had a bias generator. Among other reasons it shortened the battery
> life in addition to costing money for the build parts. I am not saying
> it doesn't exist, but back in the day I owned quite a few, always
> looking for that magic twanger that just worked.  They were hard to
> find, and after the divorce in the mid-80's (so my kids couldn't tear it
> up) I wound up using a Teac TR-22, a 1/4" bidirectional reel to reel
> which did a bulletproof job using only 1 quarter track at 3.75"/second.
> And I still have a Sony bidirectional metal tape cassette deck that made
> good tapes. But its now around 27 years old and always had a hum that
> was endemic to that model as I took it back and got another twice
> because of the hum. I was PO'd, and that may well be the last Sony
> product I ever bought. I certainly swore off their music cd's when they
> put a computer drive bricker on them to combat piracy. That was the
> straw that killed this camel.
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett