I want to buy a cassette drive for my desktop PC that reads and writes cassette tapes

i want to buy a cassette drive for my desktop PC that reads and writes cassette tapes

Anyone know a good cheapish one

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These exist?!

I want this

Why?

Versatility

More like mixtapes, lol

Do you mean for data or for music?

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It’s the same thing, you can record a Commodore 64 game time a audio cassette by playing the .tap file and recording it via a cassette player with a line in.

Tape isn't cheap, man. $1000 just for the drive and they're either SCSI or SAS.

Cassette =/=tape

I'd personally recommend getting a Walkman or another brand of portable cassette deck that can record via a line-in input like said. The problem with Cassette drive's for PC's and the sort you found in cars is that they have a habit of damaging the tape.
Perhaps something like the Bush CRS-132 would be ideal. I know a few people use it for loading old ZX Spectrum games. It's relatively inexpensive and is made by someone reputable like Bush.

ZX Spectrum Loading:
youtube.com/watch?v=Xz4FikP2O3o

I want it to be interfaced with my pc is all I need

What is the intended purpose? Is it for archiving stuff to and from the cassettes? Also generally speaking 5.25" Cassette Deck's weren't really a thing, I mean there's a few floating around but they are quite pricey. If it was me I'd go and find any portable cassette player with a separate line-in/out. Depending on your PC's setup the ideal way is to simply put two 3.5mm male to male cables from your PC's I/O panel or the front panel to the cassette player.

The Setup would be like this:
WRITE -- PC Speaker/Headphones would go to the cassette deck line-in and be recorded. [Playing audio file on PC is the input].
READ -- Deck headphone goes to the PC microphone input. [Playing cassette tape on Deck is the input].

It's for archival and being able to transfer any cassette I find into a FILE on my COMPUTER

I need your help here

As far as converting to a file, you would use a simple audio software like audacity. Your cassette player would be plugged in as a microphone. For writing it's the opposite, the headphone out of your pc would go into the cassette and you'd record using the cassette player.

So ideally, put your cassette into the cassette deck. A 3.5mm male to male from cassette deck headphones into your pc mic-in. Then record to an audio software of your choice, then save it as a .wav or .mp3.

Also as far as finding a cassette deck, depends on your budget. eBay is your best bet. Lots of people are probably trying to get rid of them, you will see expensive ones but unless you're particularly enthusiastic about cassette's it's not that important. In my opinion stick to the Japanese brands: Casio, Panasonic, JVC, Sony in particular.

The key features you want are just a cassette player that can record and has a line-in and line-out. You will often see them labelled as Mic and Headphone. You will sometimes see an input called Monitor which is even better for your needs. This works the same as Headphones but isn't affected by the deck's volume dial/slider. And it can also be used during recording, so you can plug some earbuds into the deck as you record to make sure it sounds ok.

I had a look on eBay for you. Something simple like this is ideal.

ebay.com/itm/302540982318

You're the best thanks a lot.

I'll probably fuck up implementing your great advice though. Using the deck seems to complicated for someone like me

Best of luck mate. If you need further help you can email me at:

[email protected]

you know you can't store much on a cassette tape, right? and that they're very slow?
the only reason i can think of why anyone would want to attach a cassette tape player to a modern computer is to backup very old computer software from their cassettes

keep in mind that this is a completely analog system, you're literally just recording and playing back audio in real time, so you need to manually adjust for volume and dc-offset (unless you have a deck with line-in/out, then you don't need to worry about volume)
also, recording to a 45-minute side takes 45 minutes, as it's all real time, you could dub a tape at higher speed with an appropriate deck or modification, but quality may suffer as a result

Even with line/in line out you do need to watch the volume when writing to a tape. If your audio is peaking too much it will distort the data. For audio, it's not too much of an issue for software it would be bad. Rule of thumb is:
+3DB for a Position 1 Ferrix Tape.
+6DB for a Position 2 Chrome / Position 4 Metal Tape.

Although I would add if preservation of data was essential it should be peaking at 0DB.

what i do is record at high bit depth (24/32bit) and undershoot the volume by a fair amount, then amplify it before saving as 16bit audio, this way you make the most of the 16bit range without risk of clipping

-- this is probably overkill for software cassettes, mind

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good idea and as long as it produces good results.

Why this shut $30

Because it's a quality piece of audio equipment? Just because something is old doesn't mean they're going to be cheap. No one is producing quality cassette players anymore, so the older ones that are working are still very valuable. Especially the professional grade ones like the Sony Walkman wm-dc6, which I'm incredibly lucky to own (pic related).
Sure you can buy a modern cassette player from Amazon, but the build quality will be genuine chink shit.
Another reason is collectors, this stuff is becoming rarer and rare. Cassette's haven't seen a resurgence like vinyl. There are still enthusiasts like myself out there but soon a lot of these players will just be scrapped or damaged beyond repair.