Bad Move.

[cjsmith]

I made a mistake. I put Pimsleur German Tape 9 (lessons 17 and 18) in the tape deck in my car.

It won't play.
It won't eject the tape.
I can't even pry the tape loose.

So I did another thing that seemed smart at the time, but wasn't. I began disassembling the tape player. There were eight tiny screws and I had the perfect size Phillips screwdriver.

I stripped the heads of two of the screws.

*sigh*

Maybe I should just skip to lesson nineteen?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think tape decks (especially automotive ones) have gotten worse over time, probably because the only benefit they have to start with is that they're cheap... I used to use one of those cassette-feeder devices in the moderately high-end stereo in my truck, until some clumsiness led to a tug on the cable and, well, I got it out, but it won't pull tapes in, again, at all. It hasn't been worth repairing, since it probably means replacing the whole unit (the rest of which works fine.)

(of course, If I were using tapes like that I'd just digitize them, so as to only play them once and not risk damaging them further - burning to CD for portable use with an old diskman if I needed a cheap approach [the media is around 5c/disk]. Since I just got an iPod in order to survive the flight to europe, I'd stuff them in that instead, though.)

_Mark_

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I wish this unit hadn't been part of a much nicer system, or I'd unhesitatingly break it into bits to get at the tape. Pimsleur series tapes are expensive. Unfortunately, so was this car stereo. :(

Burning to CD would have been smart, if I had anticipated this problem. Of course, if I'd anticipated this problem, I simply could have avoided sticking the tape in the car unit. I'd have listened to it at home, where I've listened to the previous sixteen lessons without trouble.

*sigh* oh well!

(re: iPod: drool.)