I used to buy the Ampex three to a bag no case tapes when I got my first tape recorder. They now sit in Memorex cases. Why, you may ask? Because they still play almost like new while the Memorex tapes have turned to mud and gibberish.
@@tarstarkusz Yup. In the '70s, the quality name-brand tapes either had the CC logo in an inconspicuous place on the J-card (1976 TDK SA) or not shown at all. The cheap BOTL or BPC displayed the CC logo through the late '80s. Once you got into the '90s, the logo largely disappeared from the cheap tapes from Certron ad nauseum.
Well done again VWestlife. First. Good choice to do 1080p. Second. Since Cassette Comeback gave up, you`re the only one making vids about old cassettes. Keep going !!
@@voltare2amstereo By the way, he finally uploaded a cassette related (instead of purely record label release) video a couple of days ago! Not that it necessarily means that he will make more, but it was welcome.
The font is the Westminster face, used primarily in the 70s on film and tv shows, particularly the original Andromeda Strain, the TV series SEARCH, and the original Rollerball.
@@Nukle0n It may have been an unintentional pun. Here's what the Encyclopedia of Alabama has about it: "Magnetic tape pioneer John Orr marketed his product, manufactured in Opelika, Lee County, under the name Irish Brand Recording Tape. Orr adapted his technology from equipment confiscated from the Nazis in Germany during World War II."
Irish was the budget line of tape from Ampex, normally made from tape that did not pass QA for the better Ampex branded tapes. It was a holdover brand from when they bought the Orradio tape manufacturing facilities in Alabama.
"Irish" was a legit decent tape brand in the open reel era. I didn't know it was used on cassettes. The name obviously was to counter 3M's "Scotch" brand.
I really enjoyed this video. You are always so thorough and clear in your explanations. But I almost fell off the chair when you showed this "little basic program I wrote" and then we see a rather sophisticated program of many lines. I mean, who writes in BASIC anymore? Wow! I am impressed.
Back in the late 70's i was 14 years old. I used to purchase CERTRON brand blank cassettes for recording music off my cassette radio recorder from radio stations. They had them in 60 and 90 mnts. They were sold in packages of 3.
Curiously, the font is called Andromeda (The 1970's version) and was owned by a long defunct company called Rapitype (imagine a Letraset type of rub-on transfer).
Anyone under 25 will probably be saying "What's Letraset". It probably won't work now but I have about 100 sheets our Technical Publication department were throwing out when they moved office. Desk Top Publishing made it redundant. P.s. Does anyone rember a machine that was like a cross between Letraset and a giant Dymo machine, with interchangable fon't wheels ? Another thing that I used for documents and diagrams back in the 1980s..
@@MrDuncl I've still got about a thousand assorted sheets of Letraset, Zipatone, and Rapitype that I inherited from my Dad. They were all kept in a cool, dry garage and are still viable after almost forty years.
@@diogenesesenna9323 That is good to hear. I used to use Decadry for making PCBs and found that newer sheets worked better. However, that might have just been due to the the continuous handling as you put down track after track.
@@MrDuncl I think I know what you're taking about--a Kroy lettering machine, right? I actually have a Kroy with 3 or 4 different font wheels that I still have in storage--worked great when I got it. It was given to me by a graphic arts supply shop ("Dakota Reprographics" was their name) when they shuttered in 1997. I also obtained from them several new packs of "Cello-Tak" dry transter sheets with quite a few fonts in the bunch. :)
How many of you out there recorded your tapes with Dolby B but turned it off during playback? It worked pretty well with the cheaper tapes and noise be damned but I preferred that little extra sizzle over a dull recording.
Another proof cassettes are... immortal. A cheap 40-years old cassette still working fine for any purpose. Actually much older cassettes still work. Good luck finding any digital data storage media that can live that long.
Ahh... Those cheap Made In Hong Kong cassette tapes were a life saver for me in the early 80's. I had loads of them... Kaytape, Cloud 7, SIM Cassette, Justine, Standard, Prince Harlech etc. I could get three for a pound and still have money left over for sweets! Haha. Happy days :) Great video, thank you.
We had a pile of Certron tapes. Same type of package. I think we used them to tape birthday parties. Yeah just the audio. I dubbed one of the few left with my grandfather playing German according. I saw Certrons everywhere.
Whenever I bought cheapo cassette tapes (here in the UK) I found that they only accepted a low level of signal. So in the end I decided always to get a brand name for a little bit extra money. Worth it!
I had some cassettes that a teacher gave me after he come back from Canada, and the brand was Pulser, it had that it was imported by the Canadian Tire Corporation. and it had french words on it as well. I could have sworn that when I looked at the thumb Nail that is was a Techmoan video.
I remember seeing such brand names at the beginning, except for KayTape. I can also remember the days of saving and loading BASIC programs on cassette tapes with TRS-80 computers in schools.
I could never imagine someone got the same brand of cassette tapes as I in the late 70's!, mine were beige color cases, white background labels, they sold them in 10 (?) pcs. sets, quality was horrendous, the internal mechanism messed up the tape all the time, the tape was bad, even the labels peeled off soon. To save some valuable recordings I have to transplant parts from other cassete cases to the Computron shells.
While this may have been inspired by Tron, some of the stylistic elements they chose seem much older than 1982 - the "Compact Cassette" logo at the top of the bag was on very early cassettes, and that "Computron" font is reminiscent of a late 1960s through 1970s timeframe... (See opening credits of "The Anderson Tapes" movie from '71 for example...) Radio Shack had a "DiscTron" static eliminator for vinyl records in 1979, but maybe that "-tron" came from electronic... anyway cool video!
These are rebranded MEMEX cassettes. I immediately recognized the label since I have a nearly identical tape here. Just Google MEMEX cassette tape and you'll see it came in nearly identical packaging to these tapes too. Irish was the cheapo tape division of Ampex.
The cheap sleeve tapes that I remember were Certron. I also remember some Recoton tapes that were purely type 0 even though they included a case. Memorex dBS and BASF Ferro Type I were both so clearly better that even 10 year old me preferred them.
My mum used to buy tapes like those all the time in a 3pack, They were simply called 'Value', They degraded quickly while using them. I saved a long Basic game to one and I could only re-load it 4-5 times before I got errors. :)
I always turned on Dolby B and raised the volume a little higher (up to 3+ db) to make up for the signal loss when I recorded on cheap tape. And I turned Dolby B on playback because I liked the high end boost it gave. Most 3 pack tapes were junk like Certron and Gemini, but the ones I bought at K-Mart had decent tape inside of them, although they were still no match for a TDK D or Maxell LN. I still have recordings I made in the early 80's when I was a Jr College DJ, and those old tapes still play fine.
In the early 1980s I bought cassettes like that, mostly from our local Woolworth. They were o.k. on my mono cassette recorder, not unlikely that from Realistic. But when I've got my first "ghetto blaster" (and later a proper tape deck), I started to buy cassettes from proper brands, and re-used those cheap cassettes for my C 64.
Thank you for that great video. Last week I found by chance a computer radio show on one of my old cassettes that presented "recordings" of computer programs. My wife did not know this and I tried to explain how it worked (fail). With your video this will be so much easier!
great vid, I had an Apple II & lots o really cheap tapes like: JSR, Avanti, Reels (WT Grant brand), Concertape (RS brand), KMC (kmart brand), Lafayette, & unbranded ones white label with a rainbow swoosh & "Swire Intermagnetics Made in Hong Kong" in very small lettering
There was another cheap brand called “Memmex” - that had a similar color scheme as the Computrons. I don’t think anyone would have confused them with the high quality premium brand “Memorex”.
I have some Sony SOM-15 computer cassettes and the neat thing about those compared to normal cassettes is that there's no leader on the reel, so you can start recording at counter location 000.
Ha! Novatron: that was what all the later Mellotrons (the notoriously temperamental tape replay keyboard instrument that was the bane of every prog rock keyboard player in the 60's and 70's - those flutes at the beginning of The Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever' are probably the most well known example of the instrument) were called after the company that built them lost the rights to the Mellotron name. Seems kind of fitting to mention this given that they a) used racks of tapes to store their sounds on and b) were pretty much obsolete by the 1980's, yet are highly sought after and still used more often than one would think to this day! I do like your videos - keep up the good work! 🙂
Never seen this brand before. They used the same label design like they did with other cheap brands like Broadway and Memex. Both of them were “Type 0”. I’ve seen a lot of “Type 0” cassettes on many channels like “Cassette Comeback” where Tony did a video about “Type 0’s”. These were used for Old Time Radio shows or something like that.
Yep, that's what I immediately thought: It's the same label as Broadway 90 minute tapes, except Broadway used green instead of orange. Horrible tapes even for voice recording. Maybe one in three was actually usable without jamming or excessive hiss and dropouts. Certron tapes were equally cheap but worked!
When I worked for Radio Shack back in the early to mid-80s they had 3 pack cassettes for sale. IMO those were good to be used mainly on the shoe box recorders (would have not considered using it on my nice cassette deck).
What were the tapes usually branded as? I have some cassettes that are branded as realistic but sold in bags of two. They almost look like the type two realistic LN 90 tapes for example but these say L and 120 and are still sold in a bag of two.
Ha! I remember Tonemaster & Computron. I had a few I believe. In the mid 80's I started buying Maxell, Sony and TDK. In the late 80's I made sure to buy the higher end tapes. I think I still have some of the CD-IT tapes from the late 90's and early 2000's.
When I was a kid I used to buy blank tapes that came in a bag of 3 like that, but they had no brand or any info. They just said "low noise" and had the old fashioned Compact Cassette logo. They didn't say how long they were, but they were C-40's lol.... my upload of "Rhona at Night" was recorded on one. Sure they're low end but they're great for kids on a budget.
Glad I’m not the only one who likes type 0 cassettes. I recently bought a three pack of K mart branded cassettes, still in the original package. For recording from radio, they’re not bad at all.
Fun fact: Computron is the name of a transformers character, specifically one from '85 or '86 I think - he shows up first in season 3 of the original series. He's a combiner, a transformer made when 5 other transformers combine together. As can be expected, his strength was super computation powers, which gave him an edge in battle by analyzing opponents' weaknesses.
That brings back memories of waiting while it screeched away for minutes on end and hoping the program loaded . " 1964 : BASF acquires Computron Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts. Computron produces magnetic storage tapes for computers. This acquisition eventually helped establish BASF as a leader in magnetic media, including audio and video cassettes, floppy disks and other computer storage solutions."www.basf.com/us/en/who-we-are/history/1960.html
If I was out with the boys on Friday or Saturday nights and they wanted to borrow a mix freestyle tape that only I had I’d run back to my house and throw a Tonemaster on high speed dub and give those out. They made for great giveaways. Irish cassettes were legendary.
I've seen cassettes branded "Digitron", I've also seen the Digitron brand on cheap portable stereo systems. I've also seen the same Digitron tape branded at Hi-Tech. Do you plan to source anymore Computron equipment? I'd love to see that Computron clock radio, just for the brand alone.
I still have a box of new white label "Computer Cassette" (literally just white package with white casettes) from the now long gone European supermarket chain: GB.
Ah yes, the mark of a good cassette tape, coming with no case, three to a bag
I used to buy the Ampex three to a bag no case tapes when I got my first tape recorder.
They now sit in Memorex cases. Why, you may ask?
Because they still play almost like new while the Memorex tapes have turned to mud and gibberish.
😂 you mean hallmark.
"Irish Series 2000" sounds like a brand of discount soap with a funky odor
It sounds like a knock-off of Irish Spring or Lever 2000.
Or some kind of superbike championship
"...or the combination of both: Gary Numan"
Nearly fell off my chair 😂
your the last person i would have guess would comment on this video
cs188 watched VWestlife!? This RUclips lore is starting to get a bit far fetched
Me too when I met you under such a video
Yay CS188 famous for the HoH SiS and the JoJ on the Vwestlife channel!!!! :)
@@cjpwolf2436 Come to think of it SiS is a vintage computer thing so it kinda comes together!
"High Output, Low Noise": the stamp of quality!
I had some very pretty original iMac like translucent DSC tapes that came three in a bag. Unfortunately they were "Low Output, High Noise".
Or maybe affordable lol
It immediately screams "rubbish" in most cases. This time it wasn't so bad, though
OMG I almost fell off my chair at the little "Computer" montage @ 0:53
And the song.... 😂
damn whats up with everyone falling off there chairs in the comments!
@@coolelectronics1759 We need to invent better chairs!
If you weren't aware that's from the Regular Car Reviews video on the Chrysler New Yorker
@@AiOinc1 have to watch it, for the sake of scsi
Low noise High output, the mark of quality
@@tarstarkusz Except for the 60s and 70s. Even higher quality tapes had this logo.
High noise, low output the mark of trash.
104.9 Big power, low IQ FM.
@@tarstarkusz Well, most of them do. By the '90s, the Compact Cassette logo pretty much disappeared from usage.
@@tarstarkusz Yup. In the '70s, the quality name-brand tapes either had the CC logo in an inconspicuous place on the J-card (1976 TDK SA) or not shown at all. The cheap BOTL or BPC displayed the CC logo through the late '80s. Once you got into the '90s, the logo largely disappeared from the cheap tapes from Certron ad nauseum.
Well done again VWestlife.
First. Good choice to do 1080p.
Second. Since Cassette Comeback gave up, you`re the only one making vids about old cassettes.
Keep going !!
There's also cassette master and Dr cassette
It did much better than I expected from a "Type 0" cassette.
@@voltare2amstereo You're right but... So what?
See? Some "cheap ass" cassettes are actually better than you think.
@@voltare2amstereo By the way, he finally uploaded a cassette related (instead of purely record label release) video a couple of days ago! Not that it necessarily means that he will make more, but it was welcome.
Recorded on nakamichi with dolby B or C it will sound good.
I see VWestlife watches Regular Car Reviews as well.........
the big BROWN. BROWN, BROWN.
@@Oyashiro_Chama Winga-Dingas and BROWN
The font is the Westminster face, used primarily in the 70s on film and tv shows, particularly the original Andromeda Strain, the TV series SEARCH, and the original Rollerball.
Ahh, thanks for putting a name on that typeface! 😁
"Machine readable" like on your cheques.
@@PHUSHEY Do people still use those? 😲
@@BertGrink Yes, some cheques still feature the E13-B MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) font (which inspired the Westminster font)
The ITV time travel series TIMESLIP from the 70s used it too or something very similar
That jab at Gary Numan was so perfectly executed that I wish I could subscribe more than once just for that
I remember the "Irish" tape brand for the tapes I had for my reel-to-reel recorder.
@@Nukle0n In that case, it would have been cool had they called their brand "Bourbon".
@@andreasu.3546 *Guinness or Bailey's
@@Nukle0n It may have been an unintentional pun. Here's what the Encyclopedia of Alabama has about it:
"Magnetic tape pioneer John Orr marketed his product, manufactured in Opelika, Lee County, under the name Irish Brand Recording Tape. Orr adapted his technology from equipment confiscated from the Nazis in Germany during World War II."
Yeah, I remember them too, Erling - they were not unknown here in Denmark.
my dad always praised their reel to reel tape! It's a shame the cassettes look type 0!
Irish was the budget line of tape from Ampex, normally made from tape that did not pass QA for the better Ampex branded tapes. It was a holdover brand from when they bought the Orradio tape manufacturing facilities in Alabama.
Yes, acetate version.
"Irish" contrasted with 3M's "Scotch" brand.
I am HONORED you chose to use a clip from one of my videos, thank you!
I love slugbug! it's so cool that you use his music in your videos :)
(also love the OK computer in the description haha)
"Irish" was a legit decent tape brand in the open reel era. I didn't know it was used on cassettes. The name obviously was to counter 3M's "Scotch" brand.
Man, nothing says quality like tapes sold in multiples in a cellophane bag. Bought a few of those myself when I was young. :-)
no cases or j-cards: check
"High output, low noise": check
old compact cassette logo: check
made in hong kong: check
*Type 0 cassette confirmed*
seeing that regular car review clip made my blood pressure spike to unsafe levels. thanks a lot
Notice your channel coming up on 15 years. Congratulations.
I really enjoyed this video. You are always so thorough and clear in your explanations. But I almost fell off the chair when you showed this "little basic program I wrote" and then we see a rather sophisticated program of many lines. I mean, who writes in BASIC anymore? Wow! I am impressed.
It's one of the sample programs included in the manual for the Color Computer 3. It took maybe 10 minutes for me to type it in. Not too bad.
Back in the late 70's i was 14 years old. I used to purchase CERTRON brand blank cassettes for recording music off my cassette radio recorder from radio stations. They had them in 60 and 90 mnts. They were sold in packages of 3.
Yeah, my dad scored absolutely unbranded 3-packs of tapes for 99-cents that are falling apart these days when I'm digitizing them.
Curiously, the font is called Andromeda (The 1970's version) and was owned by a long defunct company called Rapitype (imagine a Letraset type of rub-on transfer).
Anyone under 25 will probably be saying "What's Letraset". It probably won't work now but I have about 100 sheets our Technical Publication department were throwing out when they moved office. Desk Top Publishing made it redundant.
P.s. Does anyone rember a machine that was like a cross between Letraset and a giant Dymo machine, with interchangable fon't wheels ? Another thing that I used for documents and diagrams back in the 1980s..
@@MrDuncl I've still got about a thousand assorted sheets of Letraset, Zipatone, and Rapitype that I inherited from my Dad. They were all kept in a cool, dry garage and are still viable after almost forty years.
@@diogenesesenna9323 That is good to hear. I used to use Decadry for making PCBs and found that newer sheets worked better. However, that might have just been due to the the continuous handling as you put down track after track.
@@MrDuncl I think I know what you're taking about--a Kroy lettering machine, right? I actually have a Kroy with 3 or 4 different font wheels that I still have in storage--worked great when I got it. It was given to me by a graphic arts supply shop ("Dakota Reprographics" was their name) when they shuttered in 1997.
I also obtained from them several new packs of "Cello-Tak" dry transter sheets with quite a few fonts in the bunch. :)
@@RyanSchweitzer77 Yes. I looked at some pictures and it looks very familiar.
Worlds are colliding! Are we going to see the Jetta on RCR?
I used to look at the tape leader as indicator for quality back in the old days.
Maxell tapes had the best ones.
Head Cleaning leader! Love those tapes!!!!
LOVE the RCR reference!
That was epic!
RCR?
@@macdaniel6029 Regular Car reviews, their channel speaks for itself.
Regular Car Reviews, a pretty awesome channel for car reviews and literature essays.
How many of you out there recorded your tapes with Dolby B but turned it off during playback?
It worked pretty well with the cheaper tapes and noise be damned but I preferred that little extra sizzle over a dull recording.
3:18 and 3:43, I haven't heard that sound in 37 years! yet so familiar...
Another proof cassettes are... immortal. A cheap 40-years old cassette still working fine for any purpose. Actually much older cassettes still work. Good luck finding any digital data storage media that can live that long.
You can't lose with Gary Numan jokes.
Omg an RCR clip!😲. "...DOSssssss" You are a man of culture too,I see. 😊
Ooooooh! Magnasonic! 🤣 And I bet the Kaytape is designed to use on your sweet Kaypro computer.
The Magnasonic one MUST be for use with the Magnavox Odyssey, right?
Another very interesting video there VW. I enjoyed it much. 😎👍
I remember I had "COMPUTAPE" C15 cassettes for my Commodore 8032, they had the same "Data 70" font for their logo.
Yes! I just looked and I stll have three of these. Used them on a C64.
@@michielboland628 They also can be used for 12" 45 EP mixes
Like the new channel name! Regulars don't really need the clarification, but I suppose it's good for newbies. :)
What was the old channel name?
wild RCR references really throw me for a loop when I find them
Ahh... Those cheap Made In Hong Kong cassette tapes were a life saver for me in the early 80's. I had loads of them... Kaytape, Cloud 7, SIM Cassette, Justine, Standard, Prince Harlech etc. I could get three for a pound and still have money left over for sweets! Haha. Happy days :) Great video, thank you.
We had a pile of Certron tapes. Same type of package. I think we used them to tape birthday parties. Yeah just the audio. I dubbed one of the few left with my grandfather playing German according. I saw Certrons everywhere.
Whenever I bought cheapo cassette tapes (here in the UK) I found that they only accepted a low level of signal. So in the end I decided always to get a brand name for a little bit extra money. Worth it!
All the Gary Numan references are killing me
When RCR came up, I was like "I thought I'm watching vwestlife"
IIRC, cassettes for computers didn't have a leader at the beginning. the tape went all the way into the reel.
Oh, and I had some Irish tapes as a kid!
I had some cassettes that a teacher gave me after he come back from Canada, and the brand was Pulser, it had that it was imported by the Canadian Tire Corporation. and it had french words on it as well. I could have sworn that when I looked at the thumb Nail that is was a Techmoan video.
I loved the music of Slugbug
Love it. I keep a 1980's electronics search going on eBay and there's been a Computron phone NIB for $40 listed for a while now.
I recently learned Trisonic (the lightbulb people) made cassette tapes
Also the people that made universal dc adapters.
"Or a combination of both. Gary Newman."
You know I was expecting Max Headroom, but that works too.
Love this channel. Always get excited when there's a new one.
Holy crap you’ve watched Regular Car Reviews…
I remember seeing such brand names at the beginning, except for KayTape. I can also remember the days of saving and loading BASIC programs on cassette tapes with TRS-80 computers in schools.
I could never imagine someone got the same brand of cassette tapes as I in the late 70's!, mine were beige color cases, white background labels, they sold them in 10 (?) pcs. sets, quality was horrendous, the internal mechanism messed up the tape all the time, the tape was bad, even the labels peeled off soon.
To save some valuable recordings I have to transplant parts from other cassete cases to the Computron shells.
That CoCo3 hits me HARD in the nostalgia!!
While this may have been inspired by Tron, some of the stylistic elements they chose seem much older than 1982 - the "Compact Cassette" logo at the top of the bag was on very early cassettes, and that "Computron" font is reminiscent of a late 1960s through 1970s timeframe... (See opening credits of "The Anderson Tapes" movie from '71 for example...) Radio Shack had a "DiscTron" static eliminator for vinyl records in 1979, but maybe that "-tron" came from electronic... anyway cool video!
These are rebranded MEMEX cassettes. I immediately recognized the label since I have a nearly identical tape here. Just Google MEMEX cassette tape and you'll see it came in nearly identical packaging to these tapes too.
Irish was the cheapo tape division of Ampex.
Same color, different name and font.
Ironically, 3M's primary tape brand was "Scotch".
The cheap sleeve tapes that I remember were Certron. I also remember some Recoton tapes that were purely type 0 even though they included a case. Memorex dBS and BASF Ferro Type I were both so clearly better that even 10 year old me preferred them.
It took me way longer than it should have to realize (back in the day) that Tron got it's name from electrons.
It’s actually named after a BASIC command.
@@5roundsrapid263 It's a shame, then, since it means instrument in Greek. (The programs are "instruments" of the users.)
@@donnierussellii4659 Fascinating. I’ve studied a lot of Greek, and never knew that.
My mum used to buy tapes like those all the time in a 3pack, They were simply called 'Value', They degraded quickly while using them. I saved a long Basic game to one and I could only re-load it 4-5 times before I got errors. :)
Gary Numan really should consider covering Computers Again, made for each other!
I always turned on Dolby B and raised the volume a little higher (up to 3+ db) to make up for the signal loss when I recorded on cheap tape. And I turned Dolby B on playback because I liked the high end boost it gave. Most 3 pack tapes were junk like Certron and Gemini, but the ones I bought at K-Mart had decent tape inside of them, although they were still no match for a TDK D or Maxell LN. I still have recordings I made in the early 80's when I was a Jr College DJ, and those old tapes still play fine.
That wasn't a bad review. Sometimes I still seek new cassettes around in some of the stores I go to.
“This was a good video” -cobra commander
In the early 1980s I bought cassettes like that, mostly from our local Woolworth. They were o.k. on my mono cassette recorder, not unlikely that from Realistic. But when I've got my first "ghetto blaster" (and later a proper tape deck), I started to buy cassettes from proper brands, and re-used those cheap cassettes for my C 64.
Thank you for that great video. Last week I found by chance a computer radio show on one of my old cassettes that presented "recordings" of computer programs. My wife did not know this and I tried to explain how it worked (fail). With your video this will be so much easier!
I wasn't expecting to see Mr. Regular make a cameo
Surprised you didn't show a Certron tape at the start. Those were everywhere in the 80s!
I have one too, just not with the original J-card.
I had those all over the house.
great vid, I had an Apple II & lots o really cheap tapes like: JSR, Avanti, Reels (WT Grant brand), Concertape (RS brand), KMC (kmart brand), Lafayette, & unbranded ones white label with a rainbow swoosh & "Swire Intermagnetics Made in Hong Kong" in very small lettering
There was another cheap brand called “Memmex” - that had a similar color scheme as the Computrons. I don’t think anyone would have confused them with the high quality premium brand “Memorex”.
noooooooo and I thought memorex was total garbage from walmart.
And there were some Maxell ripoffs branded as Maxwell.
@@vwestlife Someone was "Smart". ( hiss and boos from the crowd)
this is such a good day. a new VWestlife video with an RCR reference??!!
Not bad for a tape intended for computer use. The sound reminded me so much of those pre-recorded cassettes from the early 80s.
I have some Sony SOM-15 computer cassettes and the neat thing about those compared to normal cassettes is that there's no leader on the reel, so you can start recording at counter location 000.
Ha! Novatron: that was what all the later Mellotrons (the notoriously temperamental tape replay keyboard instrument that was the bane of every prog rock keyboard player in the 60's and 70's - those flutes at the beginning of The Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever' are probably the most well known example of the instrument) were called after the company that built them lost the rights to the Mellotron name. Seems kind of fitting to mention this given that they a) used racks of tapes to store their sounds on and b) were pretty much obsolete by the 1980's, yet are highly sought after and still used more often than one would think to this day! I do like your videos - keep up the good work! 🙂
Here for the 70s typeface, Gary Numan and RCR. Genius combo.
Never seen this brand before. They used the same label design like they did with other cheap brands like Broadway and Memex. Both of them were “Type 0”. I’ve seen a lot of “Type 0” cassettes on many channels like “Cassette Comeback” where Tony did a video about “Type 0’s”. These were used for Old Time Radio shows or something like that.
Yep, that's what I immediately thought: It's the same label as Broadway 90 minute tapes, except Broadway used green instead of orange. Horrible tapes even for voice recording. Maybe one in three was actually usable without jamming or excessive hiss and dropouts. Certron tapes were equally cheap but worked!
When I worked for Radio Shack back in the early to mid-80s they had 3 pack cassettes for sale. IMO those were good to be used mainly on the shoe box recorders (would have not considered using it on my nice cassette deck).
What were the tapes usually branded as? I have some cassettes that are branded as realistic but sold in bags of two. They almost look like the type two realistic LN 90 tapes for example but these say L and 120 and are still sold in a bag of two.
80s/90s thing with "2000" written on it = super modern thing
Make that 70s. In the 90s anything "2000" was cliché, at that time it had to be "3000".
The Gateway 2000 computer company dropped the 2000 from their name in 1998. I'm surprised it took them that long.
I totally would record Neil Young's 1982 album Trans on this.
Ha! I remember Tonemaster & Computron. I had a few I believe. In the mid 80's I started buying Maxell, Sony and TDK. In the late 80's I made sure to buy the higher end tapes. I think I still have some of the CD-IT tapes from the late 90's and early 2000's.
I would love to give the Computron a run in one of my Dolby S decks just for shits and giggles 😂
I have a green tinted transparent tape with iconography of feet on the label. No brand, just feet. My most prized possession.
When I was a kid I used to buy blank tapes that came in a bag of 3 like that, but they had no brand or any info. They just said "low noise" and had the old fashioned Compact Cassette logo. They didn't say how long they were, but they were C-40's lol.... my upload of "Rhona at Night" was recorded on one. Sure they're low end but they're great for kids on a budget.
Thanks VWestlife for another interesting video. Sending you good and happy vibes from India. Hope you're doing well. Take care.
Love these obscure cassettes!
Glad I’m not the only one who likes type 0 cassettes. I recently bought a three pack of K mart branded cassettes, still in the original package. For recording from radio, they’re not bad at all.
Thank you for making me feel old!
That slugbug song is so funny 😂
Fun fact: Computron is the name of a transformers character, specifically one from '85 or '86 I think - he shows up first in season 3 of the original series. He's a combiner, a transformer made when 5 other transformers combine together. As can be expected, his strength was super computation powers, which gave him an edge in battle by analyzing opponents' weaknesses.
That brings back memories of waiting while it screeched away for minutes on end and hoping the program loaded .
" 1964 : BASF acquires Computron Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts. Computron produces magnetic storage tapes for computers. This acquisition eventually helped establish BASF as a leader in magnetic media, including audio and video cassettes, floppy disks and other computer storage solutions."www.basf.com/us/en/who-we-are/history/1960.html
If I was out with the boys on Friday or Saturday nights and they wanted to borrow a mix freestyle tape that only I had I’d run back to my house and throw a Tonemaster on high speed dub and give those out. They made for great giveaways. Irish cassettes were legendary.
Had I have to guess, I would have said that a "Computron" was some kind of electron tube that helps perform calculations or store data.
kinda like a magnetron in your microwave oven.
Imagine a crossover episode with Techmoan, LGR, 8bit Guy, Modern Classic, This Does Not Compute, Mr Carlson Lab, VWestlife and Technology Connections
I've seen cassettes branded "Digitron", I've also seen the Digitron brand on cheap portable stereo systems. I've also seen the same Digitron tape branded at Hi-Tech. Do you plan to source anymore Computron equipment? I'd love to see that Computron clock radio, just for the brand alone.
Thanks! You always have great videos.
Tonemaster...... gotta love tapes sold in bags.
Get reel
Play your Computron-recorded music on the cool cassette player in your K-car! Anyone remember those early 80s Reliants and Aries?
My parents had one from 1987, with cassette player and AM Stereo standard!
I still have a box of new white label "Computer Cassette" (literally just white package with white casettes) from the now long gone European supermarket chain: GB.
I gladly take my breakfast watching your videos (lunch or dinner too, any meal actually ^^)
Nice Video. I remember Tron around 1980,
and had a Commodore 64 back then.
I also hate it when the computer uses all the hot water.
Great video as always. Great song too.