• 0ops@piefed.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      3 months ago

      As if cassette tapes were some obscure niche and not a major media format for years

        • arrow74@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          3 months ago

          I’m young enough that CDs had taken over by the time I was born, but my parents still used their massive cassette collection for about a decade.

          So this should be familiar to people born after cassette’s prime time

        • Flamekebab@piefed.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          3 months ago

          I literally use them for my baby. I’ve got stacks of old rubbish on tape (got them for free) that’s getting taped over to provide easy, tactile storage of spoken word and music. Nothing obscure is being destroyed - it’s naff compilation tapes and similar shite. If they wear out then I can just dump the digital audio onto another tape.

          They’re easy to choose from, don’t play infinitely, fairly hard-wearing, and the quality isn’t bad because the tape deck I record with is a fancy direct-drive unit.

          It’s kinda funny recreating some old Swedish comedy stuff for her. As in, when I was little I had tapes that were either dubbed from other tapes or from records that a family member borrowed from a library in Stockholm. For my daughter I’m grabbing the audio from YouTube rather than the library abroad, but the end result is the same. Multiple levels of nostalgia and a load of tapes aren’t going to landfill.

    • spongebue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      My app happened to crop the caption so I didn’t even see it until I saw your comment. I wholeheartedly agree with you, but also don’t like that it lead me to that negative value caption.

      Tl;dr your comment has neutral value 😀

    • 6nk06@sh.itjust.worksBanned from community
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      3 months ago

      I dont know which cap you had but it was the worst idea because my caps were round and unsuitable for that. I used the pen itself.

      • SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        3 months ago

        The part that protruded down from the cap along the side of the pen to form the “pocket clip” fit between the gear teeth and made turning easier & more reliable - you slid the cassette down the body of the pen until that part engaged the teeth. Later I came to prefer the style of pen below due to the flatter protrusion, but both worked pretty well.

    • Davel23@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      Japanese pencils are slightly bigger in diameter than American ones, they fit perfectly into the cassette sprocket while American ones leave enough room for the pencil to spin without spooling the tape.

  • pedz@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    3 months ago

    Back in the early 90ies I would sometimes find smashed cassettes on the ground with the tape floating in the wind, while coming back from school. I’d grab the tape and splice it into another cassette so that I could hear what was on it.

    I’ve never found anything more than boring music but the act of “repairing” the tape made me feel like a spy.

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      3 months ago

      Yeah it sounded like boring music if you played it forwards. You had to play it backwards to get the awesome messages from Satan.

    • PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      Same, but for me, it wasn’t in the early 90s.
      Also, I discovered some totally amazing music this way that still haunts me to this day.

  • Almacca@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    3 months ago

    I’m so old I remember the music industry trying to ban the sale of blank cassettes because of copyright infringement. Oh how we laughed at them.

  • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    3 months ago

    That cartoon has a glaring error: cassette tapes did not perform the pencil surgery on each other. Humans performed the pencil surgery on the cassette tapes.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    3 months ago

    I could do it with my finger, no pens/pencils needed.

    The pens/pencils were more often used for manual rewinding to save battery life than getting the tape back into the cassette.