From: mike 

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 20:06:09 -0600, "Glenn Meadows"
 wrote:

>Yup, par for the course.
>
>I recall in one of the early Sony literature pieces, and a meeting with
>"techs" from Sony, they stated DAT is NOT a professional
format, and at that
>time, they only guaranteed 100 plays on a tape.

In a previous life I worked for a major record company in the 8-track days
(in the Quality Engineering department - geesh, what a misnomer... but I
digress...).   I was told that the 8-track cartridges were
designed intentionally to not work after about 100 plays.

This was told to me by the same person who also told me that it was OK for
cassette tapes to have multiple 1 second dropouts (i.e., absence of the
iron oxide coating) per cassette because the cassettes were ~only listened
to by bimbos walking in the sand on the beach~.

The stories I could tell....

 /m

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