Did any old computers utilize multi track cassettes?

[Dripfree]

So I picked up this little guy from my local thrift store that raises money for for the blind.

 

 

It's cassette recorder for the blind. It's really sweet actually. Fist of all it's very tactile it's made to feel out the controls. It's even got an exposed nub on the tape wheel so you can feel which direction the tape is moving while fast forwarding or rewinding. It also has an indexing button that records a tone when you hit it. The tone can be heard when rewinding to let you know where to stop. Coolest thing of all is that it records and plays standard cassettes in 4 tracks. This is because it was made to play books on tape and my assumption is that it allowed you to get to different points in the book without too much moving around on the tape. It made me think that this track and indexing would be very convenient for saving programs. I just did an experiment recording a "Hello World" program with my TI 99/4A across all 4 tracks at the same point on the tape. I was a little surprised that it worked. I know that this is not such a great idea for storage because it's a non standard format and if this machine breaks the tapes wont work on anything other machine. My question is why did this never become a standard? It seems like it would have made life a lot easier back in the old cassette days.

[Osgeld]

isnt 4 tracks side A and B in stereo?

 

I think it would be fine

[82-T/A]

Yeah, I noticed that little opening and figured that's what it was before I read your comment about it... that's really cool! A lot of this stuff doesn't get done because it's an unnecessary expense. Cheap and simple is often how most products are produced. Most companies/organizations will not produce a product beyond the extent to which it needs to be, to get sold. So if 99% of the people wouldn't care, they won't add that feature as it probably just costs too much.

 

I'm not sure I know the difference between tracks, but I guess it is both sides with stereo. One thing I did see "back in the day" was a PC/AT computer... probably an 8088 or a 286, that had a side-loading cassette player in one of the 5.25" floppy drives. I assume it was for tape backups. It was a normal standard music cassette slot... thought it was really cool. The music teacher in school had it on her computer in her office, which she never used.

[Seob]

The only sideloading pc compatible tapedeck i found was the plus deck 2 from 2004. Would you know the brand?

[+thegoldenband]

The Intellivision Keyboard Component used a 4-track format, I believe, with 2 digital and 2 analog tracks.

[awhite2600]

I suspect that multi-track recorders weren't used due to possible issues with head and tape alignment. If a signal was split into two or four parallel tracks then even the smallest misalignment could cause read errors.

 

Mainframes used 9-track tapes to store data. (These are the big computer tape drives that you always see in movies.) These drives used complex tape paths and vacuum columns to work reliably. This level of complexity would not have been cost effective in a consumer product.

[82-T/A]

The only sideloading pc compatible tapedeck i found was the plus deck 2 from 2004. Would you know the brand?

 

 

No, that was almost 20 years ago quite honestly. I don't think it actually said the make on it either. It was like, you put a cassette in sideways (length-wise, meaning the opening was narrow), and then pulled an arm down over it just as you would a 5.25" floppy drive. Although not certain, I'm pretty sure the drive was meant specifically for data storage, and not for playing music (like that 5.25" one above seems). There were no mic or headphone jacks, and this was something like an 8088 which I seriously doubt even had an Adlib in it.

 

Looked cool though... heh.

[bkrownd]

I read sinclair microdrives were 2-track(?), but are 1-reel "cartridge" rather than 2-reel "cassette"

Edited August 21, 2014 by bkrownd

[ed1475]

The Coleco ADAM digital data packs (tapes) were 2-track.

[Dripfree]

isnt 4 tracks side A and B in stereo?

 

I think it would be fine

 

I never thought of it like that. Makes sense though. I'm not all that savvy when it comes to cassettes though. I'm kinda from the cd generation. My experience with cassettes is mostly making mix tapes off the radio and now old computers. I did have a Tascam 4 track recorder in high school. It was for music recording. It could record 4 individual tracks at the same time and then you could mix it down to a standard cassette and control all the levels. If I remember right it recorded at a higher speed then normal. I always thought it was to preserve quality, I figured it would use more horizontal space on the tape since the vertical space was shrunk due to the extra tracks... I never learned much of the technical stuff back then cuz I was more concerned with becoming a rock star. The sound quality was great on that thing if I still had it I'd probably be hooking it up to my TI right now.

[jmetal88]

 

I never thought of it like that. Makes sense though. I'm not all that savvy when it comes to cassettes though. I'm kinda from the cd generation. My experience with cassettes is mostly making mix tapes off the radio and now old computers. I did have a Tascam 4 track recorder in high school. It was for music recording. It could record 4 individual tracks at the same time and then you could mix it down to a standard cassette and control all the levels. If I remember right it recorded at a higher speed then normal. I always thought it was to preserve quality, I figured it would use more horizontal space on the tape since the vertical space was shrunk due to the extra tracks... I never learned much of the technical stuff back then cuz I was more concerned with becoming a rock star. The sound quality was great on that thing if I still had it I'd probably be hooking it up to my TI right now.

 

That might be the same 4-track recorder that my dad has. Pretty sure it's a Tascam.

[John_L]

I think you guys are misunderstanding 4 track tape decks. Back before we had digital, we had multi-track tape recording. Typically, in a commercial setting, professionals would work with systems that had up to 48 tracks. In the early 80's when technology permitted, 4 track decks were produced for commercial use. You could record up to 4 mono tracks on a standard cassette tape. We would typically use the highest quality tapes we could find as they produced the best results. The way it was used was you would record up to 3 tracks, then you could "bounce" tracks 2 through 4 to track on to track one. You could repeat this process, but only once or twice totally bounces as each bounce introduced noise and the quality would deteriorate quickly. When you were done, you would bounce 2 tracks to one output, and two tracks to another, and record those 2 outputs on a normal stereo recording tape deck. Technically, you could use all 4 separate tracks to record data, and either manually hook up one output to the computer tape input, but I doubt it would work reliably if at all. @ed1475... all regular mono tape decks have two tracks (one per side), the thing that was different about the Adam's tape was that it ran at higher speeds than normal tapes. Other than that, it's a typical mono tape deck.