I still have the last Cassette Deck I purchased and never used it, it’s a Sony TC-K6ES, needs to replace the belt that opens the cassete enclosure. It turns on perfectly and I Am thinking after all this years to have it repaired and making it a part of my system.
But I will have to find some tapes after to play around with it after all this years.
Was it TDK or Maxell that made the Metal bodied cassettes?
When we returned to NZ a couple of years ago I managed to pick up a mint Yamaha KX-690, 3 head, dual capstan, Dolby S, etc. Going back through my old cassettes, some of them sound surprisingly good. The cassettes I recorded however, not so good!
TDK offered the MA-R, which was said to use selected MA tape housed within an alloy framed shell. The first version of TDK MA-XG also used an alloy frame, albeit slightly cut down compared to MA-R. The US also saw a Type II version, SA-XG.
As well as my love for everything vinyl and CD. I recently purchased a stack of 10 TDK tapes for my Commodore 64. Yes, there is a market, and let eBay be your guide.
I never thought I would see myself purchasing tapes again, though my rule of thumb is nothing longer than C90 and only TDK. I have no experience with Maxwell and others. Though from my youth, I always had poor experiences with BASF, Jamming and being wrapped around the drive wheel and spindle of a tape deck. It was a real bummer when in a car.
Warm regards,
Mitch.
I’m impressed you can still get tapes to work with a Commodore 64. I recently retrieved my 1983 model plus ancillaries from the family home and couldn’t get any of my old games on tape to load. Quite a regret!
I know people have ported some old classic games over into simulators, but there would have been something special about playing them on the original machine.
Mark
Maybe the cassette deck needs a bit of a clean and a new belt.
I’ve got original ZX81 and Spectrum games that still load OK.
Dear Mark,
You have to stand in a long queue as my Ultimate II+L is on its way after a 12-month wait. With this device (please google it), you can play D.64 files when copied to a micro SD Card or now, I believe to a USB Stick. I only play the games that I have purchased, which are quite a few. eBay has listings though the prices of some are quite astronomical.
Let me know if you would like more details. I also belong to a Commodore Computing Club with a fixed interest in C64 and Amiga computers.
Something also to Google is the Mega 65, which I have been on the waiting list for 12 months or so. I am not allowed to put up links though there are still game writers for the Commodore machines and the new Mega 65.
Happy Googling.
Warm regards,
Mitch.
I grew up in that era of ZX81 and Commodore VIC20 and C64. It was fun back then, but I would never want to go back to that era. I don’t get the fascination, beyond the nostalgia. There’s 8-bit Guy on YouTube who loves this stuff, among a few others. I just shake my head. 
I loaded up the C64 emulator on my PC about 20 years ago, and the fun lasted about an hour. All that LOAD *,8 baloney drove me nuts! Those games were so lame! 
The fascination was not playing the games.
Real ZX81 fans know how to zero the accumulator with a single byte. 
Oh I know. I did so many mods to the ZX81. Adapted a full size keyboard to it. Added a font memory and changed all the characters to lower case. Made my own expanded memory. Wrote my own games in assembler because that Basic was sooooo sloooowww.
For the C64, I had more fun cracking the copy protection on the games than playing them. None could stop me, although one game was really tough. Remember they used bad sectors on the disk drive to make sure you couldn’t copy it? Then the drive would make a horrible noise resetting the head when it encountered that bad sector. So obnoxious. So that had to be removed from the game. Plus we wanted to share games at work. 
One for the Naim historians.
Am I right in thinking that Naim did some development work on a cassette deck, based around the (very robust) NEAL mechanism that is (or was) apparently used by UK Police forces to tape interviews with suspects in the cells to comply with PACE rules?
And that this project was dropped so that R&D resources could be better deployed to develop the first Naim CD players?
Poke?
I’m curious. Having disposed of a truly iconic and beautiful Akai deck some years ago in my “yoof” and regretted it every day since, I have to wonder, what do people with cassette decks do with then now?
Decoration?
Make new mix tapes just for fun?
Just play old crap you can’t be arsed to buy on vinyl/digital?
Every tape I had I now have on CD. Why do I miss that deck so much?
‘Poke’ is a BASIC command to change a single byte in RAM.
The accumulator is the primary register in a Zilog Z80 CPU.
You can use “LD A, 0” but a shortcut using a single byte and fewer clock cycles is to use
“XOR A”
Yes, IIRC it used a Pabst mechanism. In the end it wasn’t deemed viable considering the numbers that would have been required and resource was better put into making CD something listenable.
That was a wonderful tape @Richard.Dane . My favourite of all time – exceeded many metals IMO and had fantastic dynamic range – you could really push the levels with that one.
Ah yes, Z80 was never my forte. M68000 was more my bag. 
.
Back on topic……
I was listening to my Nak DR1 recently and enjoyed tapes from college many years ago. They sounded very good. Maxell XL2 recorded on an early Nakamichi deck. I listen to both my decks monthly to keep them in shape. No recording this century but I am sure they are still capable!
Simple… you were (decades?) younger.
So was I.