I found this chonky shoebox style cassette recorder in a local charity shop (Goodwill) A bit of a surprise to see it there, so after £10 was exchanged it was mine. Sony called there cassette recorders "Cassette-Corder" for some reason
This has some weight to it, and feels extremely well built, it should serve the 8-bit micro's of its time well
The transport controls are in an odd arrangement (to me anyway), and the FF button is missing its trim but still functions as it should, it's a little dirty although you can see an attempt was made to clean it
Even the battery cover has some heft to it, four C cells are all that's needed for portable operation
The rear plate and serial number
On the right side is a DIN connection which is line in and out, this was used by computers such as the BBC micro and Acorn Electron
On the left side we have a choice of a Fig-8 mains input or a 6VDC barrel socket for external power, then the usual Ear, Remote, and Mic sockets for computers such as the ZX Spectrum and the TI-99/4A
Under the tape transport controls there is a REC/BATT LED and the volume control, which is a slider style rather than rotary. You can also see the carrying handle which pulls out from the unit
There is also a tape counter and a close up of the Sony badge
It does appear to have a permenant magnet as an erase head and a mono tape head, this was common for these shoebox cassette recorders. This model features "Auto Shut Off" which is Sony speak for Auto Stop, likely only during Play and Record functions though
I assume this was not the original power lead as the plug has sleeved pins
And the multi language user manual
2 - Variable not found, 691:1