You'll be able to copy Manic Miner using that!

It's beautiful. It's just weird to think there's lots of kids who can't identify it.

Just found the advert for it. Available at selected stores for £99.95, and personally recommended by Terry Venables. amstrad.com/wp-content/u...

Amstrad seemed to enjoy baiting the "Home taping is killing music" police; see also their double deck VCR. Amstrad's radio/cassette recorders/'boomboxes' usually appear to be fairly decent quality, no doubt due to their choice of OEM (Orion?) and not just "the mug's eyeful" (Techmoan, rather unfair)

This seems fairly solid and well built. The radio sound quality and reception, at least as far as I can tell, is pretty decent. Belts will need changing, but that's a given with old cassette recorders.

£109 in 1981 is £420 in today's money. per; www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-pol...

Daily Mirror 19 November 1981

About a year later, it was only £59 in Comet! (per Lynn Advertiser 22 October 1982 page 12)

Nice to see the endorsement from Terry Venables. I take it this was after Lord Sugar bought spurs.

Oh I wondered what the connection was.

it did seem very random, having a football manager espousing the value of tape2tape recording ;).

Holy shit, it tapes TAPES!

You know what they say...

My test cassette is this. The “I can’t believe it’s not butter” of mix tapes I got with a decent Sony boombox back in the 80s. The boombox was stolen not long after I bought it, yet the cassette still haunts me like the ghost of music past.

There's a few okay ones there. Put on some denim cut-offs and dance around the boom box like Madonna. Or Blossom.

Looks like I’m going to have to go full-on Techmoan to fix this. Probably worth doing. It’s fairly solid for an Amstrad, and quite charming in its way.

How did we ever manage before “AI”?

Or eBay for the parts. I bought my tumble dryer in 1998 and it's still going strong, but I changed the belt a few years ago. I found a genuine replacement for about £5 and a YouTube video on how to swap it (which wasn't obvious!). I also found replacement hinges for an 80s Linn turntable lid!

Everything is so complicated these days, though. My car won't start and I'm fairly confident it's the battery so I've ordered a new one that's coming tomorrow. Apparently you're supposed to use an OBDII scanner to change the battery serial number in the car's software so it knows it's a new one.

Yes we have that with Mrs B’s car. It’s the stop/start system that complains if we don’t do that. Adds at least £75 onto the cost.

There seems to be debate in the VW forums about whether it's necessary or whether it "learns" the characteristics of the new battery. I have got a scanner, so I'll do it if I can find the setting!

I had to get a replacement SD card for my satnav unit paired with the car a few years ago. My original one had got corrupted. Thankfully covered under warranty. I did however retro fit the cruise control and diagnosed a faulty EGR valve so complicated car electronics works both ways I suppose.

That's why I bought the scanner - with the warranty I had you had to pay a diagnostic fee if the fault wasn't covered, so I could tell if it was covered before I went. My colleague had to pay for a Nissan map update, but the VW ones are on their website and you can use any SD card.

I’ve probably got one that’s the right size. Bought a bag of mixed belts from eBay last year. I’m grateful the belts are still intact. Have a fighting chance of working out their size and the route they take. Big fan of repairing stuff.

"Then draw the rest of the owl"

Hahaha!

Incredible. If you'd told me, ten years ago, that AI would be able to correctly identify 'part of a toilet' or 'part of a bicycle' from a photograph, I'd be amazed. But it was able to deduce the exact specs along with instructions on how to replace the parts and what to order for those jobs.

To fix the thing, take out broken parts of thing, then replace with new parts. Take care not to break the thing while fixing the thing! Now thing is fixed. Thanks, AI.

So, to fix a part that's inside I have to *checks AI* , open the box, take the old parts out, put the new parts in, and close the box? Got it!

I never thought that we would need a word to describe the AI equivalent of mansplaining... #ArtificialIdiocy #AIsplaining

I think this is the popular artiste “Terence Trent D’Arby”. The leftmost cassette deck is working, albeit at a very slow speed. The right one is even slower. Slack belts methinks. Or spiders. There was a web in one of the cassette slots. Just grateful it didn’t trip the RCD!

The radio works fine, and the telescopic aerials are not bent or damaged. That’s a good start.

Does it have that "High speed tape copy" feature to copy your mate's latest mix-tape ? :-)

Sadly not.

Is that white smoke coming out of the back, or just a mirrored image of something moving behind you?

Haha! Rest assured, that’s a citronella candle.

Phew! The time delay of about 10 seconds after powering on and the first smoke to appear seemed adequate. Then again you probably know all about electronics smoke so you would have reacted immediately.

Absolutely. Wasn’t expecting much drama from something like this though.

I love this so much. Memories 🎶

Nice

They rule

Great, I'll pop over with some blank cassettes and you can copy some Spectrum games for me. 😊

What a gift!!

Very much so! Be much better after a service.

My 1st thought

Ha! It's like I'm 17 again and my girlfriend and I are exchanging mix-tapes. Getting misty here.

They must really love you. That sucker needed financing back in the day.

#drool

This was our family's replacement for the Ferguson "music centre". The record player try stopped opening without help pretty quickly.

This has LEDs on the speakers showing the music power as well!!

Holy Third World Suitcase, Batman

Amstrad made boomboxes???

Apparently so.

I mean, it's not brilliant, yet it's not awful. The sound quality is okay, at least as far as I can tell, as is the build quality.

as a foreigner i thought they'd earned all their fame with personal computers but i see that they had a broader range than that

Yeah, they manufactured (or shipped) a lot of budget audio equipment in the UK, of varying quality. I think the computer division was the outlier - their computers were surprisingly well designed.

That's quite a mug's eyeful you have there. Alan would be proud.

I love it!

BUT! It's got LEDs which show you the audio level!!!!

They did an excellent job spacing those out.