21 Jun
2000
21 Jun
'00
2:31 p.m.
[HP82161 digital cassette drive]
Here is some information off the little hoard of tapes I have.
Six tapes in the fitted plastic box.
Philips brand, Certified Digital mini-cassette LDB 4401, made in Austria,
8920 440 10101. One has a tape label with hand printed Transport 1.1 and
1.2. None are sealed, but none but the label unit look particularly used.
Rewinding one with a pencil revealed nothing special, ie no mirror.
The drive has a HP brand tape in it, but that goes with the drive to Stan.
If you want a tape, email me and I will work out some nominal fee, most
likely by listing one on eBay to see if I am insane for parting with them
first, but keeping it nominal for people on the list.
Serious begging/logic/waving$ only regarding the
little box with 6 data
cassettes, which I am guessing will be dandy in my HX-20.
No they won't (I have an HP82161 and several HX20s).
The HX20 uses microcassette tapes, which is a standard created by one of
the Japanese companies (Sanyo?) for dictating machines. Audio tapes work
fine in the HX20, or at least they always have for me. The mechanical
form of the cassette is identical.
The HP82161 uses a special tape cassette. It's somewhat similar
mechanically to the Philips minicassette (also used in dictating
machines), but it's not identical to it. There are extra notches in the
HP tape to prevent audio tapes from being used. The HP tapes have an
internal mirror for optical EOT detection (like a QIC cartridge). I think
the tape is different to normal audio tape. They are _no way_ the same as
microcassettes.
I believe that the HP cassettes were standard items at one time. The
alignment tape (which I don't have :-() is supposed to be a Verbatim
product, so I guess Verbatim made normal data cassettes as well.
FWIW, the HP82161 tapes are hard to find (at least in the UK) (I have my
unit for reading such tapes mostly that people send me -- I have exactly
one scratch tape), so you might well find an HP calculator enthusiast
would like them (and would pay a reasonable amount for them).
-tony