Ka-chunk. Let’s face it, 8-tracks were not that great. But the players, that’s another story. The Panasonic RQ-830S, aka the dynamite or TNT player is just one of many lovely designs that used to grace the shelves of electronics stores. Hackaday alum [Cameron Coward] came across a non-working model and used it to create the KaboomBox.
Just like before, all [Cameron] has to do is stick a tape in, and music starts playing. But now, instead of using rust on tape, the music is accessed via RFID and lives on an SD card inside the 8-track player.
Power it on, and a tiny LCD screen showing through the track number window first displays the KaboomBox logo, then shows a timer whenever it’s waiting for a tape. And just like before, pushing down on the plunger skips to the next track.
The new guts include a Raspberry Pi Pico and an RFID reader, plus a DF Player Mini to handle the digital-to-analog conversion and amplify the signal, and an SD card to store the music. Now, [Cameron] is only limited by the size of the SD card. Check out the demo video after the break.
We’ve seen all kinds of boomboxen around here, from the lit to the Bluetooth to the payphone variety.
Being a child born in 1973 I still remember 8-track players, we had one on our home stereo. The second car I ever owned as a teenager was a 1977 Ford LTD with the half-vinyl landau top and it had the original 8-track player in it. Great memories, thanks for repurposing a cool looking piece of technology from my childhood.
8-tracks and later cassettes, but does anybody remember 4-track players? Also, back in the 1960’s I worked on commercial background music/PA systems. The music player was large and had a wood case. It used tape cartridges. Kind of like an 8-track but 3 times the size. It may have been Grundig. The amp was Bogen.
When I was in high school in the 90’s aspiring musicians used four-tracks to record demos. Never saw one in person though. You could record each track independently I think and go back and layer stuff. Before digital became doable to broke amateurs it was all there was. I can’t remember if they used standard cassette tapes or if you then had to record the final “mix” to a cassette but guys were handing out demo tapes so it could be done somehow.
Google Fostex, Tascam, or Ross “4 track mixer recorder”
My older brother got a ’63 Corvette with a Muntz 4 track, just a mechanical lever to select track one or two. The tracks were twice the width of an 8 track and cleaner so he said. The small selection of artists led him to go 8 pretty quick and I got the 4 track and 4 or 5 tapes. The amp in it served me for many years. I still have the tapes. I also had at one point back then a dual 4 or 8 track player. That model had to move the pinch roller up thru the hole on the 4 track but not for an 8 track.