Hugo Holden
Veteran Member
I found an interesting article in a 1969 Electronics Australia magazine about a specialized cassette deck used for data storage, it makes for an interesting read (image attached) so I thought I would share it. I hope the text can be read.
For my Sol-20 I have been using the Panasonic slimline recorders (image attached), with good results, even though the motors in these things have a mechanical governor and there are phase or timing errors in the speed. So for example if a 1kHz tone is recorded, there are frequency irregularities which are not only easy to hear, but can be seen on the scope, which no doubt more expensive tape decks would not have. Yet, because of the way PT designed their tape interface, these irregularities are ignored, I wrote an article on the interface which I attached on another thread too:
http://worldphaco.com/uploads/The_SOL-20_tape.pdf
It looks like from the information in the 1969 article that they went out of their way to accurately speed control the cassette deck, but it might have been overkill if the circuitry that processed the recorded and recovered data was as good as PT's system.
For my Sol-20 I have been using the Panasonic slimline recorders (image attached), with good results, even though the motors in these things have a mechanical governor and there are phase or timing errors in the speed. So for example if a 1kHz tone is recorded, there are frequency irregularities which are not only easy to hear, but can be seen on the scope, which no doubt more expensive tape decks would not have. Yet, because of the way PT designed their tape interface, these irregularities are ignored, I wrote an article on the interface which I attached on another thread too:
http://worldphaco.com/uploads/The_SOL-20_tape.pdf
It looks like from the information in the 1969 article that they went out of their way to accurately speed control the cassette deck, but it might have been overkill if the circuitry that processed the recorded and recovered data was as good as PT's system.
