Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyDuell
I am pretty sure Tandy sold blank 8 track cartridges at one time. The format was a lot more popular in the States than over here of course.
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Up to 1984/85 (pre-InterTan) the UK Tandy stores basically used the same catalogue as Radio Shack in the US...just with prices converted into pounds. The products were the same, which lead to some oddities such as CB radio sets being available before it was legal to operate them here, and Radio Shack telephones and answering machines (branded DuoPhone I think) which were not BABT approved. And....blank 8-track cassettes.
Having lived stateside in the late 90s, I grew to understand just how popular that format was over there. It barely made any impact here but was hugely popular in cars in the USA with a fair number of home machines used both to play pre-recorded material and to record mix tapes for the car.
My local Tandy did have a few blank 8-track cassettes and one 8-track recorder on display, if memory serves they sat there for some time.
What I've noted about magnetic tape is it's resilience. They're from before my time but I have some RTR tapes recorded off-air of the BBC radio series of Steptoe and Son in the 60s....pretty much perfect. I have B&W RTR video tapes from the late 70s that still play. VHS 40 years old. Cassettes 45 years old. My 8-bit computer tapes which date back to 1981-1987 still load into my Sinclair computers.
Cassettes, for a format that was designed to be a dictation medium, really did become ubiquitous for all kinds of recording and some of us still use them today.