Duration: 37:05

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18

First, I want to thank Gwem for the authorisation to use his tape album on this video!

You can find his website on: http://preromanbritain.com/gwem.
The "Breaking Even" album page is at https://gwem.bandcamp.com/album/breaking-even and the "Break and Enter" at https://gwem.bandcamp.com/album/break-and-enter

Also thanks to Retroric for the Oric tape drive!

As I explain in the intro, originally these drives were collected for a massive proper scientific test of which tape drive is best to use, but confronted with the reality that most of these devices are degraded (components, belts, gears, etc...) by the time, any comparison would be kind of useless, so here is just a quick presentation of the various models, with their features, and what I consider important or not.

CORRECTIONS AND NOTES:
- Regarding the Alba, the slider is not actually monitor volume but tone control, which means it does not actually have a monitor at all. My bad.
- The Philips D6260 is not from Germany, it's from Austria, sorry!
- The tape loading on the TC800 would actually work because it's only the right channel which is scrunchy, since I can set the right channel volume to zero, it would just load fine without any glitch from the left channel.

So my personal top recommendations for loading games on the Oric, would be:
- The C682A Oric branded drive because it works nicely
- The Ingersoll XK696 because of the volume monitor and general quality
- The Philips D6260 because it is a good color match for the Oric Atmos

I would not recommend any of these:
- HI Fi type systems because they have too many features, tend to be complicated, have no remote feature, and tend to use TR or Cinch/RCA connectors instead of the standard 3.5mm jacks
- Portable players because they generally lack many useful features, like tape counter, recording, azimuth control, remote, ...
- Table recorders like the Philips AS and Sony TCM have the most important features (simple and standardized connectors), but the lack of monitor is definitely annoying, and I would avoid models with external power bricks with non standard voltages and connectors because these always tend to either fail or get lost, and it's hard to find replacements (either have something with like +12V DC or the standard C7/figure of 8 mains cable)

Here is the chapter list:
00:00 Intro
03:58 Ensemble view
04:59 SuperUSB Cassette Capture
05:20 Yamaha TC800
06:12 Ingersoll XK696
07:27 Alba R170
08:13 Binatone
09:07 Oric Tape Drive (aka C682A)
09:43 Fostex X12
11:08 Marantz CP430
12:31 Philips D6260
13:25 Philips AQ6355/AQ6455 Sony TCM-939
14:59 90ies portable devices
15:07 Philips D6595
16:01 Voice Recorders
17:08 Kasuga KC62
17:25 Super USB capture
18:06 Erebus (SD Card based tape emulator)
18:19 Repair kit (grease and belts)
19:58 Tape cleaner
20:49 Calibration tapes
21:45 About azimuth tweaking
23:02 Test tape on the Marantz
24:19 Frequency test tape
24:36 Fostex X-12
26:11 Fostex playing reverse
27:15 Demonstrating azimuth on Ingersoll
29:01 Yamaha TC800
29:36 Super USB Capture (music)
30:44 Kasuga KC62 (music)
31:18 Philips D6595 (music)
31:53 Sanyo TRC-1148 (music)
32:13 Oric Tape Drive (music)
32:43 Alba R-170 (music)
33:11 Philips R6260 (music)
33:34 Philips AQ6355 (music)
33:54 Philips AS6455 (music)
34:36 Binatone (music)
35:24 Sony TCM-939 (music)
36:05 Sanyo TRC1550 (music)

As usual, feel free to comment if you have remarks, suggestions, questions, or ideas of topics you'd like to be covered in my videos.

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and if you want to code on the Oric, we have a Software Development kit for you:
- The Oric SDK: http://osdk.defence-force.org