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Tape recorder / tape streamer mod

last photo ←

Iam gonna take you back thousands of years ago...
Some of us will still remember these big tape streamers in the old day's of computers. (certainly I don't, I wasn't born yet...) Where these beautiful tape streamers in big computer rooms run al day to get a single file for a computer. I love those things...

So when I saw chance to buy this old (broken) digital tape recorder, I knew immediately what I should do with it. Got al the guts out of the machine except the motors that drive's the reels. (pic 1/4) I build in a external Usb harddrive into it and connected the "busy" light throug a amplifier to the motors. (using a optocoupler and a solid state relais for the electronics people, pic 5)

When accesing the drive, the motors will spin the reels, making it look like the real thing.
Depending on what you are doing on the drive the reels will spin constantly or just move a inch or two.
I connected some indicator lights to the electronics to show the tape direction or harddrive acces.
The tape direction can be changed by a simple switch...

I posted a little clip to show how it runs...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXIihS8vdVE