Panasonic tape recorder

Most of my disassembly fodder comes either from the sew/vac place or the campus's occasional purging of obsolete and broken electronics. These are fairly clean sources for junk, in the sense that they never have any nasty food trash mixed in with mechanical and electronic stuff. The piles outside of houses and apartments in anticipation of heavy trash day are generally 'clean,' but there's always a risk of food trash (or worse), so salvaging from them requires some discretion.

I almost didn't grab this one. It had just rained, and the junkpile that this recorder was in smelled as if it had some food trash in it, and I pretty much avoid trashpicking in anything that might have organic garbage in it. But the recorder was off to the side, and a cursory visual and smell test determined that it didn't have anything nastier than a little mud on it, so I took it back to the apartment. And washed it off, just to be sure.

All trash has a story, an object's history of use before it is discarded. Most of the time, the junked object doesn't give much indication of its 'life,' but sometimes it does. If I may play amateur detective/archaeologist for a second, the masking tape above the battery area seems to indicate that the battery cover didn't stay in place, which makes me think that at one point someone dropped the recorder and broke the latch, necessitating the quick-fix. Maybe the owner finally lost the battery cover altogether, prompting him or her to finally toss the tape recorder out.

Or not. I don't know for sure, and on a strictly practical level I really don't care. But I do think it is instructive to think about trash beyond just 'that stuff they take to the landfill twice a week.'

Anyway, I knew from previous experience with tape players that this disassembly was going to be at least somewhat more entertaining than the past few things I've taken apart. Yep, lots of little pieces, though I was disappointed in how many of the little screws didn't budge. Also, note the detatched carry handle in the upper right of the picture above. It's made of metal. You don't see that much these days.

The signal traces (i.e. printed wires) on this circuit board are much less compact than those of more modern electronics.

A few trophies that I don't what I'll do with. I like the shapes of the buttons though.