Since my years with the ZX81 and some time with the TS2068, I have fought the idea of adding another peripheral such as a Winky Board or any other type of amplifier and/or filter. I guess I’m fussy but I hate clutter in my computer area. So I’ve endured lost data, blaming it on the cassette recorder. In fact, I ended up by buying three recorders. Eventually, I went back to the first one, a Sony TCM-121, and had to run it “wide open” to get a good load on various brands of tape. A small, mostly defunct user group I once led had a “group buy” of cassettes once and we placed it with an outfit in Des Plaines, Illinois. In bulk, their prices per tape were the best we’d seen. The tape we’d selected out of the six offered still had me running at full volume. (This rates a “10” on my recorder since the volume control is marked from 1 – 10.)
Thinking of the wide selection they had, I called Polyline Corp., the distributor of the tape we’d gotten on the group buy. When I asked the sales rep about comparisons between four types of tape, she sent a sample of each for me to try. A test was run in this manner: using the Tasword II word processor program, I wrote a short article and SAVEd it to each cassette, one atter the other. Next, I cleared the text from memory, set the volume control arbitrarily at “7” and was unsuccessful in LOADing the text from a BASF LHD cassette. Undaunted, I reset it at “8” and got a good LOAD. This means that I only needed 80% of the volume compared to any previous LOAD! Well, if the BASF was that good, what would the Magnetite 12 do for me? Since the text was already SAVEd, I set the volume control to “7” once again, cleared the text, and LOADed. It worked. Try “6”. It worked, too! And with the Ampex 615/616 and Agfa 611/811 tapes could LOAD safely at “5” — 50% of the volume required before the test!
No $12 amplifier, no $20 Winky Board, nothing more than more sensitive tape. Not only that, but the Agfa 615/616 C-10 tape cost only 34.9 cents per cassette when bought in a lot of 100, even less in greater quantities.
This is an unsolicited testimonial, not an advertisement. User groups OI individuals who would like to get in on a good thing should call Polyline Corporation at 312/298-5300 or 312/297-0955 and ask for a free catalog #85P1. The rest is up to you.