1994: Panasonic RQ-2102 Cassette Recorder

These days, its easy to find entertainment on the Internet. You have probably seen or at least heard of GIFs, funny little picture animations that are usually hilarious. All over the internet there are memes, popular pictures captioned in different ways to be funny. Want to have some fun? Just surf YouTube for a little while. But back in the 80s, all you needed was a cassette recorder! Record fart sounds, make funny noises, you can have a blast with a tape recorder. Oh, and like YouTube it can even play music!

Origin & How it Works:

Most folks know what cassette tapes are, it was a music format that dominated the 80s, and died in the 90s with the advent of CDs. This comes from a friend of my mom's who owned it for many years. It was common in the 80s and 90s for a house to have one of these to play cassettes, they all looked about the same, like a shoebox. This model is fairly new to be called retro, but it is identical to the models from the 80s.

Like an odometer for a cassette.

Nearly all of these shoebox cassette recorders have the standard play, fast forward, rewind, etc. buttons up front, and were powered by either AC power line or a bunch of C or D batteries, or both, like this one. They have a counter that moves as the tape moves, but has to be manually reset with a small button. This one even has a convenient carrying handle.

Handy for recording farts anywhere!

On the side is a socket for a power cord, a plug for an external microphone (even though this one has a microphone built in), a plug for external speaker or headphones, and a volume wheel. The entire silver area above the cassette door is the speaker.

More connectivity than an iPod

How well does it work?

I listened to some 5150 earlier, and it reminded me how old and decrepit this thing is. The audio is dull and washed out, even plugged into my stereo speakers. It goes fast and slow, pitches up and down, and generally sounds awful. But it is tolerable, and as it plays longer, i guess warms up, and sounds a little better. I haven't recorded anything in a long time but when I did it sounded just fine.

Van Halen is best on a crappy cassette

Conclusion & Future:

I have quite a few cassettes, even some blanks if I ever wanted to record anything for some reason. Every so often I'll play a cassette...I see it as another conversation piece of my collection. Next blog we might stay in the 90s with some retro computers!