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Fragment 32 of 72 · drawer 03

Cassette library borrowing card

A reconstructed circulation card for software whose location and reliability could not be separated from the playback device.

Accession
MW-F-032
Representative period
Representative home-computer club practice, 1980s
Drawer
Queue paper
Certainty
interpretive
MUSEUM OF WAITING / RECONSTRUCTED RECORD MW-F-032

Cassette library borrowing card

Representative home-computer club practice, 1980s

Observed surface

TAPE C-14 / SIDE A: three programs / SIDE B: utility collection

Counter positions are approximate and differ by recorder.

Previous borrower reports second program loads only on the slower copy.

Implied procedure

Borrower records successful counter position, attempts, and any audible damage.

Return rewound to the beginning, not to an individually useful position.

Interpretive residue

The card maps sequential media through accumulated human experience.

A number on one recorder becomes a story rather than a universal address when the cassette moves to another machine.

INTERPRETIVE COPY DO NOT CITE AS A HISTORICAL ARTEFACT

Accountability record

Evidence beneath the reconstruction.

These institutional sources support the mechanism or historical practice interpreted above. They do not contain this reconstructed record, its wording, or its invented values.

  1. Computer History Museum · ongoing Memory & Storage: Timeline of Computer History A broad chronology of magnetic tape, disks, cassettes, removable media and solid-state storage. Open institutional record ↗
  2. Commodore Business Machines · 1984 C2N / 1530 / 1531 Service Manual Period service documentation for the domestic cassette mechanism and its approximately 300-baud data path. Open institutional record ↗