When tapes fail due to age

[Wall_Axe]

I tried loading a tape, I could hear the noises but the coloured bars didn't appear. Is this because the tape degraded over time or maybe could be the tape recorder or something else?
Other games load

[1024MAK]

Sounds like a lack of volume issue.

Mark

[berarma]

Also an azimut alignment issue.

[Andre Leao]

Probably the felt has deteriorated. You van refelt it, it's easy

[Wall_Axe]

The volume on the tape recorder seems ok.
If there is no ear wire in it it's unbearably loud. Like can be heard three rooms away.

I'll look into refelting

Most games load ok so dunno about the azimuth or if it has a screw to adjust that.

Is there any visual indication that the felt is bad?

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Curious that in the first years of internet (199X - 200X) I read somewhere that tapes would last only 20 years, hence the need of digital preservation.

The question is most tapes are about 40 years old and I'm sure most of them still works fine, if they have been correctly stored in a dark, dry place and the tape player works ok (optimal volume/tone, heads cleaned, azymuth aligned, etc).

[p13z]

Curious that in the first years of internet (199X - 200X) I read somewhere that tapes would last only 20 years, hence the need of digital preservation.

The question is most tapes are about 40 years old and I'm sure most of them still works fine, if they have been correctly stored in a dark, dry place and the tape player works ok (optimal volume/tone, heads cleaned, azymuth aligned, etc).

This has been a general trend in terms of media. Old material gets 'archived' on to new media - but will probably outlast it. Paper / clay lasted thousands of years, original film stock and microfiche can go on for hundreds, magnetic tape can do a century, magnetic discs go on for decades, cd / dvd start delaminating and fading out of existence surprisingly quickly. A lot of the newest media may be just one big solar storm or distant h-bomb detonation away from oblivion.

[rich_r]

Most of my ZX81 and Spectrum tapes, as well as the huge amount of music I bought and copied in the 1980s still play fine. Often I've had to fast forwards and rewind a couple of times to get the tape running freely, but no real issues. I think I've had perhaps three or four cassettes go mouldy or sticky, but the majority are fine. However my late 1980s/early 1990 Atari ST and Amiga 3.5" floppy discs have really degraded. A lot won't read, some are visibly deteriorated. And ironically a lot of the CDs I bought in the 1990s to replace music I had on cassette no longer play at all (delaminated, aluminium layer corroding, cracks, warped etc.)

But yes, some Spectrum tapes are sensitive to volume, tone, and tape head alignment, so you might need to experiment a bit.

[TMD2003]

This has been a general trend in terms of media. Old material gets 'archived' on to new media - but will probably outlast it. Paper / clay lasted thousands of years, original film stock and microfiche can go on for hundreds...

To deviate slightly from the original topic, can anyone shed any light on this: there is a point in film history at which a film looks "old" to me, in a way that I've never been able to explain. I've been watching quite a few 1980s films since Christmas - it just seemed like the right thing to do, and nothing from the 1980s looked "old". It didn't matter if it was Die Hard (from 1988), Back To The Future (1985), Ghostbusters (1984) or Escape From New York (1981); at no point did I ever think "this is an old film; it looks old". I do get that impression with The Italian Job - the proper one from 1969, obviously.

The only explanation I can come up with is the degradation of the colours. DVD was officially launched on 1 November 1996, so assuming that popular big-budget films were all digitised for DVD release that year or soon afterwards, that would mean that the original master version of Die Hard on celluloid film (or whatever plastic had replaced it by that time) had only been sitting on the shelves for eight years, whereas The Italian Job had just over twice that length of storage time. And I can't discount the budget of the film itself, given that all the 1980s films I've cited were Big Budget Hollywood Blockbusters (I'll have a P please, Bob...), most likely using the latest film technology that was less susceptible to degradation that whatever the British film industry could afford. That might also explain why Dirty Harry also didn't give me the "this is an old film" impression, even though it is only two years younger than The Italian Job - and eight years older than the film version of Porridge, which is likely to have been made on a budget comparable to one of Fletch's socks that Godber has just darned.

Am I on the right track here?

Also, for the record, last time I checked, all my tapes that worked in 1987-95 still worked when I did the Great Sinclair Stocktake in 2018, all those that didn't work then still didn't work, and those I'd bought as a job lot in 2003 were a mixture of working and completely knackered. I've done a restoration job on some of the dead tapes with a transplant from a Maxell UR90 and a TZX file - this is probably frowned on, but I'd rather have a working tape just in case I ever need it.

[redballoon]

About a decade ago when testing takes from my collection, I found that the cassettes used by Elite, modern Durell (yes yes Elite) and Domark had the most frequent fails on their later releases. That is all I can remember from my totally in-depth analysis.
Happy to help!
Cheers!