The tape recorder no one wanted to see 

I've had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing, and indeed speaking into the modern version of this recorder. The modern version was a CD recorder though, and it was interesting in its operation that before the interview, I was admiring it. For the record, I have never been charged with anything.

I swear, Techmoan can do a video about a wood block for 20 minutes and leave you fascinated.

The buzz at the beginning lasts 7 seconds. If it goes off, the interview is started, if it continues then there's a problem that needs fixing (tapes, mic, etc) It buzzes a couple of minutes before the end to signal that the interview must begin procedure to close or pause the interview before the tapes end. The specific tapes used by the Service Police lasted 45 minutes. Of the two tapes, one is sealed and stored as the "master copy" while the other is used as the "working copy" that can be used to listen back to and, if requested, be used to make a copy for the interviewee. The time stamp voice is used when transcribing the interview to paper form for the casefile so as to provide quick reference to points of significance.

As a former US Navy sailor that repaired electronics daily. I can faithfully recognize a proper sailor bodge job

Only Techmoan is capable of making even the most mundane device seem incredibly interesting.

In my youth and early teens, I was always very good. I frequently helped the police with their enquiries. They gave me lots of rides home to my parents too. Sometimes, if I was really drunk, they’d come out, pick me up from the pub and let me stay over for the night. I had my own room too. It had a lock on the door so it was nice and private. They always insisted I took my shoes off for my own comfort. Very conscientious and sociable bunch my local police.

Now understand why MoD needed to scrap an otherwise perfectly good helicopter carrier: blown fuse on their twin deck cassette deck.

The buzzer indicates non recordable tape. Procedure was push record, wait for buzzer to end, then start speaking. Sounds basic but it was a failsafe to ensure nothing was said but not recorded, or claimed that something was said which wasn't. The recording of police interviews became mandatory through the enactment of PACE '84 (Police and Criminal Evidence Act). The battery pack is so that there is contingency that in a power cut, or in the field, if an interview has to be conducted as a matter of urgency, that there were the means to do it. This is especially relevant for Service Police (Armed Forces) of which the Navy Regulators are the smallest contingent and the Royal Military Police the largest.

I was so expecting a puppet interrogation at the end of this.

"I've got a few cassette players in the house" Understatement of the century

- built to expect sound or complain. - crossed the seas for 30 years. - gets finally music.

"Thank you for your service. Here is a proper size bolt"

HMS Ocean is the least inventive name for a ship ever. You weren't even trying, Royal Navy.

this machine is built for a purpose instead of to a price point. so every part of it is top notch

I guess the lack of rewind/ff/play is so you couldn't accidentally (or "accidentally") overwrite anything in the room.

This is proper tv content. The voice, the subject, the historic context, the troubleshooting, the details.

Police use or at least used for long tapes because the recorded tape is a clear physical piece of evidence and police have procedures to handle and store physical evidence. A recorded file on a server requires completely different procedures. While they can be developed it takes time and one cannot just ad-hoc create them. That time recording on the other track was a pretty clever thing.

Tape rewinder...you have absolutely everything, brilliant!

“The tape recorder no one wanted to see” Alright catch you in the next video then.

Oh the memories! Our family firm in Hyde, Cheshire had a contract with Greater Manchester Police to repar these machines. They were built pretty well and were simple to service, and IIRC they came in single and double-deck versions. I think NEAL had connections to Wearite, who made domestic and semi-pro transports.

I knew staying up till 5AM would pay off.

*"it takes me right back to those all-night interrogation sessions, but they never did manage to pin that bank job on me."* 😝😝😝😝

16:46 Those timestamps could easily pass as "lyrics" to the song

Very interesting. Remember when I was a kid my grandmother saved some (broken) old radios a camera and a cassette recorder for me to look inside and "play" with. I was about 7 years old and usually would beg her to rent a gameboy with a game. (I was 7 in 1990) But after taking apart my first radio I was hooked. Later on I became an computer technican and have been working with computer and repairing stuff pretty much all my adult life. Anyway, seeing theese older genuine constructions takes me back to my grandmothers appartment and me sitting under her kitchen table with the broken radio and my grandmothers old toolbox. (My grandmother was the best, she always said that true equailiy between the sexes is not about forcing women to change tires, it is to just let anyone have the possibility to be anything. And she said if I wanted to repair or just take apart stuff that was what I should do, girls did not just have to play with dolls. Now I am 35 and have three kids of my own. My grandmother sadly is not with us anymore, but I try to keep her legacy alive. I just bought some soldering kits for my oldest son and the arduino kits are amazing value, especialy when it is the kids trying to make things because they are not afraid to test things.

I was expecting a Law & Order-type muppets ditty at the end (with the tape recorder in the middle of course). What's the point of getting toys if you're not going to play with them! :)

15:44 No wonder he can afford all this stuff..

if you can fix a skateboard, you can fix a nuclear sub, but not a tape recorder...

From an audio engineer and educator, I LOVE the walk thru! Engaging, clear and straightforward.

At first I was wondering why there were so many ICs in there, but now it is clear: it has so many failsafe functions plus the time stamp and speech synthesizer system!

They likely only used one side of the tape, and made tapes with labels on one side, because flipping tapes runs the risk of flipping the same tape more than once and accidentally recording over side A.

I was interviewed in 2017 three times in two different police stations and they were recorded on two CD-R's, and the recorder looked a lot like the digital NEAL one shown with two microphones. I remember during the interview I was more interested in the technology rather than the subject at hand! Standard CD-R's were used, I forgot which brand they were.

Top marks for an enticing title....with a justifiable explanation having clicked. An increasingly rare gem on RU-vid nowadays...

Those coppers will never take Techmoan alive!

“Takes me back to those all-night interrogation sessions“ - LOL!

Amazingly up till about three years ago these were still in use in the metropolitan police. The one you have is a portable for taking out the police station. It was a laugh explaining to younger trainee coppers what a tape was, often got the reply "Oh my mom told me about these, never seen one in real life"

Very cool old piece of equipment. I too love all the older analog stuff like reel to reels, turntables, etc. Thank you for taking the time to share. Keep the videos coming! 👍

The ICM7212 at the front is just a display driver, likely for the minutes display. Date code on that is '89. The chip at the back is a Texas Instruments embedded microcontroller TMS70C02, which is the version without the on-chip ROM, so the 'LJv1.8' is certainly the software for it stored in an EPROM (or mask ROM - hard to tell). The other chip back there is the bus demultiplexer - nothing special. Date code on the TMS is also '89 - the ©1981 refers to the Texas CPU architecture I believe. It's certainly very solidly made - typical of 'good' British stuff made in the 80s, and the yellow capacitors throughout are classic ITT polycarbonate types which I remember well from the period. This thing is designed to be bullet-proof I'd say, makes sense ;-)

When using a bench supply you should set a lower current. Yes, it will only draw as much as it uses but if there is a short then limiting the amount of current it can draw is the difference between a repair and a fire.

Really love the respect you have for this old tech... You should open a museum for this stuff, you'd make the PERFECT curator! 😊😊😊😊

Ha ha, I used those for a few hundred interviews! That’s the portable version. The voice time stamp was for transcriptions.

That shot with the lights off is brilliant. Reminds me of old Blade Runner.

I really wish you would do a segment called "Teakmoan" about retro electronics with a woodgrain finish.

Surely this was an horrifically wasted opportunity to record a puppet interrogation? Hipster puppet and old geezer puppet using the good guy / bad guy routine on Techmoan?

That annoying beep would make me confess to anything!!

Eleven minutes, precisely. How incredibly British!

16:21 - That audible time stamp actually sounds great with the music.

SPEECH SYNTHESIS ON THIS RECORDER??!!! YESSSS!!!! I love that! I love the sound of that synthesis; it sounds like it's based from an actual speaker originally. It sounds like they used linear predictive coding! That is a really neat recorder, and built beautifully. The construction is truly a piece of art. Those flywheels are gorgeous!

Testing a fuse? Drilling a screw out? That's next level stuff Mr. Techmoan! Congratulations!

The most fun that tape recorder have had! Recording music and have it's insides tickled by someone who knows what they are doing!

Its always good when "doesnt work" = "blown fuse"

Always interesting and as ever professionally produced. Thanks, Techmoan!

Also, I love how many items you pulled out to record, playback & show the audio. Absolutely beautiful! 🔋🎙📻📣💻

Holy hell, 8 D batteries, is that thing supposed to power the ships engine!?

I'ts impressive how well is build inside and how bulky looks from outside. Made to last forever, solid state.

I am truly astonished at all the little functions this thing has while looking like a steampunk pcb. Great video!

I first saw this type of recorder shown in an episode of „Midsomer Murders“ where it was used to interrogate a suspect in the Causton Constabulary (I‘m German I might add). You could see it was an interview recorder but they didn’t explain anything further, so thanks for providing this deep insight into this fascinating machine.

"HMS" Ocean" was the first ship to use "Verbal Camouflage" When they wanted to hide important assets, they could just tell people the person or item was "On the Ocean", and the British military would know where that was, but no one else had a clue. -This was another edition of "The Comic Military Speculation Text-Only Podcast."

The TI chip has 9011012 inscription. that stands for either 11th week of 1990 or November 1990. The Philips chip at 8:01 has very clear 9028 date code. Another chip under the front plate has 8912 date code. So that in total makes the machine assembled in the second half of 1990 or, maybe, early 1991 (although I incline to think that it was made about exactly 28 years ago, in September or October 1990). And, well, copyright marks don't mean the year of manufacturing ever, period.

The Texas Instruments chip is a microcontroller from the 80s. I wouldn't be surprised if the speech synthesis in the unit is handled by some TI chip as well. They were leading the market in speech synthesis back then.

This was really interesting. Always amazes me that even simple electronics can have a lot of interesting components inside of it. Love the "militarily" build in them. Pretty cool that this recorded is still in service. Good stuff & Semper Fi!

I can always count on Techmoan to have the best, weirdest, and most unique technology to show off with every single upload.

I like that "Thieves are Watching YOU" sticker, with the Peter Capaldi Doctor eyes. Just thought I'd point that out.

Cool video mat, learned something new today

12:57 - Yeah that loud, long beep sound when commencing recording is shown on basically every British police interview tape recorder usage on fictional dramas and real-life documentaries alike. As well as being used to get past the lead-in, it was also probably useful for functional reasons because it gave a totally unambiguous and unmissable signal to officers, suspects and lawyers that recording had commenced. It also worked as an interruption and reminder for the officers, suspect and lawyers to stop talking while the noise was happening, so there was less risk of the actual recording commencing with someone mid-sentence and there being any future ambiguity in court about what was being said or intended.

Nice bit of kit. Glad you got it working again, with the proper bolts. Cheers.

Interesting with the time-stamp on the other audio tracks. Official Air Traffic Control audio recordings have this as well, it's not a voice synthesizer, it sounds like a bunch of loud static - it's an encoded machine-readable timestamp that takes up the second audio track.

Great video. Oh the memories of working on old cassette decks. It really was nostalgic to watch. For one moment I thought you were actually going to rewind that cassette with a pencil. Brilliant work. Thank you for showing.

I have listened to many hundreds of interview tapes on transcript machines over the years and I always assumed that the time stamp was added by the transcript machine, not recorded on the tape. Of course it makes more sense now that I know! The transcript machines also have a speed up/Slow down feature and you can adjust the balance to fade out the time stamp. It would be great to see you get hold of a transcript machine, the ones that we used were slightly different to the one you showed on the video. Great Video. Thank you.

15:44 ... "Hello, Scotland Yard? ... Inspector Jobsworth reporting, I think we've finally identified the suspect."

That is a really neat device. I have done work designing and installing the equipment in "interview rooms".

The compartment with the three chips is interesting. The TM70C02NL is a 8bit microcontroller, the 74HTC573 is a latch which can be used as outputport of a microcontroller, and the "LJV1.8" looks like an Eprom. To the right of the TMS is a crystal oszillator. This is a small computer. Oh. Some posted that already.

This looks very much like “mil-spec” hardware. Remember that these kinds of things were purpose build for military use. Although I don’t know for sure about The Royal Navy, as a former USN technician I worked on all sorts of electronics like this. It’s build to withstand poor power quality, rough seas, must be able to be trouble-shot and fixed at sea (in rough seas too), handle salty and humid environments, and whatever else war and sea-duty can do to it. Which this explains all “oddness” of this little box. My point is that you’ve really found a cool little tape recorder there. I hope you enjoyed getting the real-life sailor experience of fixing Navy equipment. Also, the shoddy screws are likely from some sailor not being able to find the right part and using whatever was at hand. In the Navy we’d call that “gun decking”, and it would be court-martial-able.

i wanted to see a puppet integration :/

This was a very interesting video Mat, I hope to see more great content from you :)

The Techmoan channel continues to be one of the best content producers of ANY genre. As a musician and defacto home recording engineer the obsolete music platforms, analog technologies and rare gizmos TechMoan features are beyond fascinating to me...the editing & presentation has always been good but the angles showing the inside of this unit were so cool. Well done as usual...

I really loved seeing inside of that crazy tape recorder, and I'm amazed that you got it to work again. I just get so excited when I learn about tech, especially if it is retro.

Nice, That recorder has some serious history!

I have had a few interviews on these. The voice is called a “chinaman” I was told by a policeman! They are supposed to beep for a few seconds after switching on.

I know this video is over a year old now but gosh Techmoan you have become so brilliant at doing these videos since your early youtube days! Great pacing, very good script with interesting tidbits, very clearly spoken in excellent English, and all very well shot and edited as well. I wish you quit your day job and did this full time.

Terrific presentation, editing, and repair. Superb work as always. You have a piece of history there.

I wonder if the puppets have ever had a run in with the police 🤔...

The next time you want to drill out a screw, please use a left hand drill bit instead of a normal right hand drill bit. A left hand drill bit works counter clockwise, so if the screws catches in the drill bit, out it comes.

Interesting and informative as always ! Thanks for the time and effort you take to entertain us.

Wow, that voice synthesizer is really clean sounding!

That's a rather specialized recorder. Serious capstan pulleys though.

Seems crazy that they'd use a solenoid to pull the heads down instead of making it mechanical. I'll bet it really sapped the batteries.

I love these videos where you take things apart and explain how they work. ❤️

Heh, used one of these right up until 2012. The Buzz warns everyone that the interview is about to start - to clear the header as you say, and then also to ensure there's no sneaky recording of solicitors and clients. They'd also buzz about 5 minutes before the end of 30 minutes so you had warning and could change tapes. They were partnered by the most awesomely fast tape to tape copiers I've ever seen, they'd do a full side of tape in about 60 seconds, then rewind in half that. I was always amazed that they didn't rip the tape off the spool at the stop. If an interview needed to be paused, you'd open both the tape trays to show there was no recording going on. If you didn't trust the subject (always wise) you could carry the tapes out with you whilst they chatted to their solicitor. Generally you'd sign and seal one copy as the master in front of the client, then the second would be a working copy and you'd need to make 3 copies for court from that one. Nowadays there's a black box PC with 3 DVD drives, and they spit out DVD's of video and audio about 15 minutes after the interview. All controlled from touch screen. Thanks for the vid, definitely worth preserving this stuff for posterity. I bet these things cost the Home Office a pretty penny - Decent quality speech synthesis in 1989!

I still have my interview tape from about 20 years ago recorded on one of these very good quality still. Fun fact if you asked for a copy they had to let you have one. And no i`m not a hardened criminal i was a teenager caught with a bit of weed :) You are correct about the label on one side of the tape mine is only labeled on one side.

I’m sure the timestamp system was implemented in some video recorders in use in certain countries’ TV stations: I remember watching a news item from French telly on the ina.fr website, taken presumably from a master tape recorded at the station (TF1 or Antenne 2, don’t remember which one precisely) while the programme was being aired. This is how most newscasts survive in archives as they were broadcast live. Sure enough, every so often a voice would pop up on the right-ear channel telling the time in French followed by a beep tone.

15:38 That's beautiful! It's a perfect background loop to vaporwave compilations.

I just love stuff like this. Solid state tool to do a job. Absolutely no bullshit or gimmicks.

Seriously, you should open a museum!

I'd definitely use isopropyl over soap, soap leaves a residue.

Sitting there rambling into a microphone is something I could never contemplate techmoan doing...

Really liked this one, thanks for the genuine content!

Looks like a well thought out solid piece of kit.

I have been recorded by one of those. Not my proudest moment.

As soon as I saw that TI chip, I figured it had a voice synth. Very cool! Thanks!

I don't think I have electronics from this decade that are that clean inside. That thing was spotless.