Parts in question

I have a Compaq Pro Linea 4/33 on the bottom. on top of which is the JVC SEA-33. That in turn has a Denon DRM-555 on it, followed by a a Sharp VHS player/recorder.

So the Compaq is a desktop computer sporting a 486 DX2 processor. Then the JVC is a graphic equalizer. The Denon is a cassette deck player/recorder and then a VHS recorder.

The VHS recorder has a SCART connection into which is inserted a device to be able to capture the video and make it possible to output that to my current modern computer and actually record/digitalize the video.

Connection of the audio

I wanted to be able to have the cassette deck be able to easily record tapes so I can make some more mixtapes for in the car for road trips. Luckily for me the manual is easy enough to find online and I started out hooking things up. Nothing worked.

I have the headphone jack of my laptop go out into the SEA-33 and then the SEA-33 goes into a jack to my actual headphones. I hooked the SEA-33 up with the tape deck Play and Rec lines like on the diagram. Nothing. Then I hooked the tape deck up with the line directly from my headphone jack. Nothing again.

I got frustrated and then I remembered something important. These are analog systems. So if you sent a digital signal that is already low powered they are not receiving anything. In essence if I sent volume at 5% then the signal is too low to do anything with it. So I upped the volume to something like 50% and then I saw the lines moving on the tape deck. Success!

So I hooked it up with the Play and Rec lines, and it still worked. Perfect. Now I am pretty sure I can listen to the tape deck whilst recording. However what I can do now is bypass my headphones. So I can up the volume and my headphones do not break.

So yeah, I now have a multimedia tower of epic proportions and definitely would have been so cool back in the day. What a weird mix of technologies.

As a side note I run from the tape deck head phone jack a cable to my mic input of another laptop to be able to digitalize old tapes my parents in law had lying around. So it goes:

headphone jack Dell XPS-15 --> SEA-33 Line In --> SEA-33 Rec --> Denon DRM-555 Line In --> Denon DRM-555 headphone jack --> Mic jack Sony Vaio

#devlife #oldtech