brent@itm.UUCP (Brent) (03/29/84)
.
cassettes - Part 5
When we last left the two Daves, they were working for King Instrument,
and had just built the ultimate winder: the King 790. Well, King had
what they wanted, so they proceeded to ignore everything the two Daves
had to say. The two Daves got bored after a couple of months of being
ignored, so they left and went to work for North American Audio-Visual.
NAAV is up in North Carolina. They are one of the largest dup houses
in the world. They have about 50 high speed winders (King 790s or D & D
modified 750s). They get tape shells in by the boxcar load. What sort
of stuff do they record on all that tape? Rock & Roll? Country & Western?
NO! No music at all! They do Amway motivational tapes. Sell that soap.
The two Daves went to work redesigning the most critical part of the
machines: the splicer. This is the thing that applies the splicing tape
to the leader-tape butt joint. It's about as big as your hand, and usually
made of brass, tool steel and mild steel. Legend has it that the two
Daves came up with a splicer made almost entirely of Delrin plastic.
Now NAAV had what they wanted, and the two Daves went to pick up
their paychecks one week, only to find there weren't any to be had.
They had been fired. But, they're still under contractural obligation
to King and NAAV not to design tape winding equipment for some amount
of time. Last I heard, they were still stuck up in North Carolina,
trying to eek out a living winding tapes, waiting for their obligations
to go away, and vowing they'd never work for anyone but themselves again.
What of King, now that the two Daves are gone? They really don't
know how or why the 790 works. It seems the whole machine is controlled
by a micro. The electronic Dave (both Daves are completely self-taught)
had created a programming language to control tape winders. All he
left at King were the blasted proms. No source, and even then, they
have no compiler. They're stuck.
The tape world awaits the return of the two Daves to the land of
the living.
Next time: recording at 240 ips
--
Brent Laminack (akgua!itm!brent)