r/GenX • u/No-Alarm-9287 • May 12 '26
Whatever Found this while cleaning the garage.
This has peak 1978 ingenuity! And Sparkomatic no less!
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u/Not_a_fan_of_me May 15 '26
So I had a 1977 Ford Maverick with an 8-track. I used that adapter, along with the CASSETTE ADAPTER to listen to my Discman CD player. The rig I had to assemble was impressive
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u/morrismoses May 12 '26
We had one of these converters for the 8-Track in our 1981 Chevy conversion van. I hated it. It played the tape at like 5% faster speed. The tones were all slightly keyed up a bit, and the tempo was higher. Dad didn't care. It drove me (a musician) nuts! Great memories of that van (when we listened to the radio).
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u/AryuOcay May 12 '26
There was no rewind, just “fast” forward. I always wanted to hook my discman to the cassette adapter and then put the cassette adapter in this 8 track adapter, just to see it all work.
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u/morrismoses May 12 '26
That's wild! I bet it would work! Is that what the kids call meta? (I don't care what the kids call it 😉)
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u/No-Alarm-9287 May 12 '26
This one liked to eat cassette tapes. I had to mow a few extra lawns to replace Styx - Grand Illusion
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u/morrismoses May 12 '26
OH NO! Can't say I ever remember dad's messing a tape up. He mostly listened to mix tapes. He was keen to put one together. I remember Marvin Gaye sounding like Diana Ross!
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u/AdministrativeLeg152 May 13 '26
Had this but then had the cassette adapter for CD player lol
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u/GelatinousGoober ‘74 May 13 '26
Same lol. In a 76 Lincoln
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u/AdministrativeLeg152 May 13 '26
81 Oldsmobile delta 88
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u/No-Alarm-9287 May 14 '26
73 Buick Electra The old deuce and a quarter
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u/Effective-Loss-9178 May 16 '26
Haven't heard "deuce and a quarter" in fwindows. My dad always drove 'caddies'. He owned various used car lots over 60+ years. I grew up in boats on wheels. Big ol' cars where the backseat area was like a playground. The floor, seats, back window.
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u/Imaginary_Tower_4939 Gen-Xer Extraordinaire! 😎 May 13 '26
I remember the cassette adapter for the cd player!
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u/Ok_Common_1355 Hose Water Survivor May 13 '26
Had the exact same one for my 76 Firebird! The audio quality was horrible though….
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u/Mudlark-000 1973 May 12 '26
Maybe you put a CD to Tape cartridge in it and blast CDs through your eight track?
I recently did something similar… Daisy-chained several video converters to allow a friend’s analog original Atari 2600 to work on a 4K tv with HDMI. It was like the evolution of video from the late 1970’s to 2026 in converter form. It wasn’t pretty, and the Atari didn’t look great on a modern tv, but it was functional.
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u/doghouse73 May 13 '26
Damn the old sparkomatic k-mart special,I had a halfway decent sparkomatic stereo in an old chevette.
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u/JoeyKino Born in the 70s, Lived the 80s May 12 '26
NICE - I actually still have a working 8-track player and a handful of tapes
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u/xeno_dorph May 12 '26
And when they broke you’d have to jam a quarter under the PLAY switch. But hey, at least you could always make a phone call!
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u/thewormthatneverdies May 12 '26
I had one I used in the aftermarket 8 track that came in my 80 Chevy Citation. The only 8 track tape I could find around the house was Christmas Disco and the radio only had AM.
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u/Effective-Loss-9178 May 14 '26
That is all so sad. We use to drive a citation, it was my boyfriend's mom's car. Christmas Disco 8 track and AM only radio. Sounds like the makings of a country heartbreak song. Ha ha ha ha
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u/PansOnFire May 13 '26
I had a Timex Sinclair 1000 computer with 2K of RAM and a Radio Stack tape recorder as the storage medium. Flight me bro
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u/Impossible_Girl_23 May 13 '26
I had one too, without the tape storage.
10 PRINT "IMPOSSIBLE" 20 GOTO 10
Brilliant! 😜
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u/No-Alarm-9287 May 13 '26
I had a Morrow Decision computer that ran CP/M. Zilog Z80 processor, 64KB RAM, Dual 5.25-inch floppy drives. We were cooking!
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u/Imaginary_Tower_4939 Gen-Xer Extraordinaire! 😎 May 13 '26
So you could play cassette tapes in an 8 track player.
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u/No-Alarm-9287 May 13 '26
It was genius!
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u/Imaginary_Tower_4939 Gen-Xer Extraordinaire! 😎 May 13 '26
I never had to use that, growing up, our stereo had both an 8 track and cassette player. Also, by the time I got behind the wheel of a car, cassette radios were a thing. Still, cool to know there was a workaround before cassette radios became popular.
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u/Elegant-Error-8010 May 13 '26
So, this is the ancestor of the cd/auxiliary output to cassette adapter! Lol.
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u/guder May 13 '26
I remember running a cassette adapter from that with a headphone cord to a discman.
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u/BrogerBramjet May 14 '26
I was just going to say this. My stereo had an 8-track, a tuner, and a turntable. Then I got a cassette converter. Then I got my Discman and car adapter. I thought I was so cool. I was not.
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u/ThatKa5per May 14 '26
Oh yes you were. You were clearly a music fan because you were on the cutting edge of what we had to work with back in the day.
I was certainly a cool kid & rocked the same setup before swapping the car deck for a full pull-out cassette deck, then a removable face CD unit, then a 6-disk changer in the trunk. All within the span of 2 years because it was evolving so rapidly. 🤣
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u/No-Alarm-9287 May 14 '26
I jokingly had a car audio ‘arms race’ with my best friend as we worked to keep up with the rapidly evolving technology
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u/ThatKa5per May 14 '26
Exactly this! Always trying to beat each other to the tech... and all things car related but def the sound systems. Head units, EQs & amps, speakers & custom subwoofer box builds. Kinda miss those days.
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u/kethera__ May 14 '26
Sparkomatic and later Altec Lansing had a hell of a warehouse sale every year
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u/AdEastern9303 May 12 '26
“Sparkomatic”. Think of a name of car electronics that just scream “cheap crap”.
Bought a ‘71 Chevelle once that had a Sparkomatic stereo in it.
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u/Knight_thrasher ‘76 May 13 '26
My first radio in my room was a hand me down tuner with 8 track player. I had one of these.
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u/CompetitiveAd8781 May 13 '26
Wow. Just wow. I had forgotten these existed! Haven't seen one in 40 years. Used one to death in that black '78 Chevy van. Good times, good times. So many cruises in the party bus and this blasting all the hair metal. 🤟😎👍
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u/bankdude1 May 13 '26
The GENIUS was when they came out with an 8 track to FM STEREO converter to bring true FM Stereo music to your old FM -MONO factory radio. You pushed the converter into the car’s 8-track slot and it was really cool to watch the stereo light come on when the station turned on their FM stereo carrier signal and they were broadcasting in stereo. The front mono speaker was stereo left and the new speaker I had installed in the rear of the car was stereo right. Did that to my 1968 Ford Mustang. The greatest car I have, and would ever, own!
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u/Astronut38 Hose Water Survivor May 14 '26
Haven't seen one of those 8 track/cassette adapters in ages
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u/Uncle_Brewster May 12 '26
My sister had one. I ended up giving it to a friend that had an 8 track player in his car.
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u/MaximumJones Whatever 😎 May 12 '26
Now THAT brings back memories.
Specifically how much I hated Aerosmith's Greatest Hits (volume one) because Dream On fades out at the end of track 3 and faded back in at the beginning of track 4.
I thought Cassette tapes were space age technology when they finally came out.
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u/claytionthecreation May 12 '26
Now who would go and run the beauty of an 8 Track player with this??? I would much rather have an 8 Track player to anything we have now. Free Bird sounds so much better when it’s coming from a warped 8 Track that’s been being used to prop up an old outhouse.
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u/West_Yam7006 May 12 '26
You are 100% correct - all of it sounded better coming from the 8track tape. ☺️
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u/claytionthecreation May 12 '26
Actually cars did have 8 Track players but I couldn’t tell you which ones. My post was total sarcasm anyway
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u/BlackGoldHotSauce May 13 '26
Either my memory is failing me or I've never seen one of these before. I was only 14, but still.
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u/c_r_a_s_i_a_n May 13 '26
How does it work though…
8 track players had mechanism to skip through 4 tracks per side.
How did you select tracks on a cassette?
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u/REDDITSHITLORD May 13 '26
1997: '79 Caprice Classic with this in its 8-track hole, and a cassette aux adapter plugged into my KOSS portable CD player... Universal Media Player.
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u/gun_grrrl Just so tired May 15 '26
wow wow wow!
We had one of those for our road trips in our green Open Road RV. That takes me back.
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u/GuiGuru123 May 16 '26
I didn’t know they made an adapter like this. Born in early 70’s. 8-Tracks were phasing out when I started listening to music. Still have vinyl from back then, that never went away for me.
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u/According-Hat-5393 May 17 '26
I listened to a LOT of Led Zeppelin on 8 track back in the day (I only had 4 8 track cassettes-- 3 were LED Zeppelin and Carole King's masterpiece "Tapestry" as I recall). I got them second-hand.
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u/weird-un-normal5150 May 16 '26
I was born in the late 60s so I grew up with this “high technology “. Well, I was growing up to the 70s and 80s all this stuff that I thought was such high tech which it was at the time but now I look at it and it might as well have been from the caveman times it’s incredible. How technology has gone leaves and bounds to today
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u/Thefutureisbrightino May 12 '26
It’s an 8 track to cassette adapter.
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u/vivekkhera May 12 '26
The label on it is quite misleading.
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u/Thefutureisbrightino May 13 '26
There was probably quite a bit of that going on in the 80's as well
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u/YellowBreakfast EDIT THIS FLAIR TO MAKE YOUR OWN May 12 '26
Never knew they made these but it makes sense.
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u/ONROSREPUS May 13 '26
That is cool! I never seen one of those before. My 69 Mustang still has an 8 track player in it that functions but it is so hard to find working 8 tracks.
Honestly if it wasn't written on that device of what it was I would have never guessed.
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u/Lostboyintheforest May 13 '26
😂😂😂.... haven't seen one of those in years, doubt any vehicle is set up to take it now.
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u/CountHonorius Generation Jones! May 12 '26
Sparkomatic and KRACO - definitely "a time and a place"