CrunchGear

Yes! This will put me in Mixed tape heaven! Now if I can find my old mixed tapes I can easily copy them to CD and re-gift them.

Of course, this comes out AFTER I threw out all my 80s collection… I guess some worker in Bangladesh will be able to eat like a king tonight from all the lead and mercury he was able to extract from my garbage.

Jon

Back in the 80s, my tape drive WAS the storage on my TI-99/4A. It took 5-10 minutes to load a saved game on text-based adventures. I couldn’t imagine storing any real data on tape.

Thanks a lot. Its December 18, with no luck of getting this under my Christmas tree this year. By this time next year, the long awaited 8-track ripper will be here just in time for the holidays.

I don’t know, with all these electronic gadgets coming out every week, I feel like by the time I make a purchase, my gear is already out dated.

@ Adam

“I couldn’t imagine storing any real data on tape.”

How do you think the world backs up it’s data?

Okay, AUDIO tape. My TI storage was an audio casette player hooked up through cables to what was essentially a modem. To save, you recorded the modem’s tones to the tape. To restore, you played back the sounds.

Lookout kids, MC Hammer is making a comeback! This gadget is 2 legit 2 quit!

This actually sounds like a device I’d purchase, seeing as though I have an empty bay. XD I have a few tapes of my own (and some of my sister’s) lying around from the early 90s of shows that don’t air anymore, with music that isn’t in English. Some of it is virtually impossible to try and find, so might as well just take the song from the tape. :D

@Adam
Of course no one wants to use audio tape as storage, it’s old and it’s slow and it sucks. That’s the same reason I don’t use my 386 with a 14.4 modem to download naked pictures of Matt’s mom. This drive isn’t for data to audio it’s for turning your Goonies Soundtrack into MP3s.

I barely remember the time when cassettes were still available. The coolest feature ever was being able to fast forward to the next “track” by finding the black part. I wonder if this tape deck has that feature…. wait actually I don’t really care cause I don’t have any cassettes.

What I really care about is, can I record to the audio cassettes from my digital music, so that in the future I won’t be able to complain that I don’t have any audio cassettes. That would be bad-ass.

Amit

I totally agree with Amit’s question - will I be able to put my mp3s onto cassette’s and give them to friends only to be offended when they ask me
“WTF am I supposed to do with this?”
“for all you know, you could be holding the greatest mixtape in the world in your hands, and you’re not going to listen to it because you don’t have a tape player? n00b”

ebay + “cassette walkman” +

@Matt: Odd, I don’t remember ever seeing a “hard-dick unit” available for the TI. :)

Andrew,
Imagine the MPAA trying to bust you on that one. They would bring an old school tape player to court and say that you distributed mp3s via cassette player.

Amit

-@Amit
Naw, imagine the RIAA bringing one of those big square boomboxes to court, guy-with-flattop-haircut included.

-And how ’bout using tapes to hide a pr0n collection or like a normal removable storage option! It wouldn’t even have to be a real tape, it could be like, a little hideaway USB connector and all the Flash Drive guts inside the tape…
*takes out dremel, cassette and cheap Flash Drive* my day is officially booked…

How much does this thing go for? With a tape deck and a cheap cable you can already run all your analog through your computer sound card and easily record it. Depending on your deck the sound quality might not be as good but unless you have a DAT it’s going to sound like garbage anyway. Decks are dirt cheap if you can come across them.