Timex/Sinclair 1000 Tape Loading

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2005, Allison wrote:

> FYI: the funkyest device was an old audio echo drum.  It was
> 1.15" high by about 9" diameter with a small AC motor and 20
> staggered heads on two tracks.  I shimmed the heads to form
> 5 tracks with two heads (one for read and one for write).
> The drum was coated with brown oxide and rotated at around
> 180 rpm (effective "tape speed of ~84ips).  I figured it
> could hold 1kb per track at around 32k baud.  It did.
> I ended up using that a for a few months (till the
> motor bearings which were poor to start failed.) to store
> a whopping 10kbyts with an access time of about 400ms.

Wow, that is really cool!  Homebrew drum storage on a home computer using
audio.  Awesome!

I don't suppose you have any photos or notes for that project still?

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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