now just a quick video i wanted to talk
to you about this sony walkman this is a
cassette walkman and i think it is
possibly one of the rarest sony walkmans
ever made the reason i say that is if
you go searching for information about
this particular model you'll draw a
blank and that is unusual for sony if
you go looking for any other sony
walkman model online you'll find pages
of information about it photos reviews
goodness knows what else with this
absolutely nothing whatsoever
now it's a bit of an unusual thing this
and i'm hoping that by showing it in
this video i'm going to learn some more
about it it's been lent to me by a
friend he picked it up because he
thought it was a bit odd and he was
right now i'll show you what's odd about
it but i'm interested in hearing from
anyone that has actually used one of
these i'm not interested in somebody
doing a google search and giving me the
first result of the first page that they
find out about something similar no i'm
more interested in somebody who's
actually touched one of these in the
past and might even have handed them out
to visitors now that gives away a little
bit about what i think this was used for
but let's just have a look at the front
here first of all
it says sound alive a walk into history
now that isn't a sticker that's been
screen printed on there along with the
sony and the walkman now around the side
here are controls
you can see if it gets into focus we've
got stop play and restart
notice no rewind
and no fast forward
and also on the back here
it says this machine is not suitable for
ordinary domestic use and is protected
with a security alarm device
so they don't want you running off with
it now also on the back you can see this
thing here
a big neck lanyard so here's what would
happen i think you hang one of these
things around your neck
you get given a certain cassette to put
in it you press play you plug your
headphones in the top adjust your volume
up here and you end up listening to some
music or talking narration whatever
about the event you're at like the kind
of thing that you'd walk around a museum
with you know when you put on headphones
and it starts telling you about all the
various exhibits that kind of thing but
the question about the sound alive
business is
is that an event somewhere you go to and
it would say that above the door and you
walk in and you get your cassette
walkman on your way in and drop it back
off on the way out or is that just a
company
that was asking sony to make this
particular model for them with the idea
that they were going to then try and
convince people with events to hand
these out i think it might be the latter
i'll explain why in a second but i just
want to show you on the side here
it has the model number now all wartmans
have a model number and this one says wm
tour
now the original wartman wmd6c so you
always get the wm dash
but this time it's got the world tour
which again kind of hints towards the
whole
walking tour type of thing
now it does say it doesn't work with
normal cassettes that's a lie you can
put a normal cassette in here it'll work
just fine it'll play back in stereo it's
got a normal stereo head in here in fact
one weird thing about it is that it has
this button that's labeled restart you'd
imagine that would do something such as
rewind to the back of the tape
to the start it doesn't doesn't do
anything now that might be broken but it
just doesn't seem to engage with
anything so all we've got really is play
and stop now the only bit of information
on here that led anywhere was this logo
this sound alive walk into history did a
bit of a search on that and found
somebody selling a cassette in fact i
found a couple of these online i think
there was an elizabethan one and there
was this tudor one
now unfortunately it's just music
there's no extra information on here at
all it's done by the sound alive consort
and it was recorded in 1987
and as far as the card goes it just
tells you what the music is and it was
recorded at penhow castle in cardiff
so i kind of got a feeling this is a uk
type thing and of course we'd be the
people to walk around an old castle or
an old stately home we've got plenty of
those so maybe that was the idea of the
market for this thing that somebody
would
put this cassette in here
borrow this at the beginning
walk around a castle while listening to
some tudor music and then when they get
back to the end
they have this thing back in and
somebody takes all cassettes out rewinds
them gets them back to the beginning
again ready for the next people it does
seem a bit of a weak idea just listening
to some music i mean it's not telling
you anything about the location where
you are it's a sort of generic type
thing so you could use this in a number
of different locations it doesn't tell
you like on your left you'll see king
henry's table or anything but uh if i
just try and play a little bit of music
yeah
i don't think i'm going to hit any
concept matches for that but uh it isn't
a particularly attractive idea to me
listening to that while i'm walking
around a castle i'd probably rather just
talk to the person that i'm with
or maybe put on one of those headphones
that tells you a bit more about the
location or just music
yeah anyway um i wanted to have a look
inside the back of here because it
mentions this security alarm device
which is no doubt one of those things
like you get with a shop you know when
you walk through the barrier and it sets
an alarm off we'll see if that's inside
here but i also want to see
why this restart button just seems to do
absolutely nothing and why they bothered
leaving it on there if that's the case i
mean this thing has been custom designed
on this edge
for these people so if you only needed a
stop and play button why bother with the
restart
right so there's no sign of any kind of
security tag in the back of it perhaps
it's buried in here or maybe it doesn't
exist at all
rather a basic cassette walkman
mechanism this one but it didn't have to
do an awful lot no rewiring no fast
forwarding just play and stop
the restart button it is actually
touching a leaf switch together back
there it could do something i've just
had a thought maybe
when this thing went back to the station
at the end
the place where they handed them out
from perhaps they plug that into dc and
then maybe that only operates on dc so
let's have a let's have a try on that
well so much for that theory i've put my
three volt power supply in i've got a
cassette in the other side if i press
play we can see that it's spinning
around down here at the bottom
playing the cassette as normal
press stop
and then press restart
and it does nothing
now here's something very odd that just
happened i was setting this up ready to
do a thumbnail for this short video and
something took me by surprise and i've
now learned what the restart buttons for
now let me show you i'll just press play
so we've got our horrible music playing
and then watch what happens when i move
the cassette player to the back of the
counter here
it stops playing
if you press restart
it starts up again
i'll do that again
[Music]
now i've figured out what that's
probably about now imagine you went to
the location you were walking around an
old house or a castle or whatever and
you had a tour guide and you all had one
of these around your neck and it was
playing this god awful music but every
now and then the tour guide wanted to
say something to you so they'd reach in
their pocket they'd press a thing which
would send out a frequency which would
stop all these things playing music
they'll be able to talk to you and then
once you want it to resume you press
restart and the reason it's working like
that in here is because i've got this
wi-fi router under this character which
sends out a load of radio interference
probably
things that are going to kill me as well
and that's what's stopping this if i
move it around
[Music]
very interesting
now when i had to back off this case
before i noticed the presence of a
copper plate it sits behind here on this
side it's glued to the inside of the
case behind this dolby symbol
and i noticed it because it was
preventing me from getting the whole
mechanism out of the shell but now i
realize that that will have been the
antenna that receives the signal which
puts these devices into pores and quite
likely would also be the thing that
would set off any kind of security
system if you try to leave the location
with one of these devices but there's a
lot of guesswork in this video i've got
very little to go on i'm glad i found
out about that restart thing so we know
it is working but i haven't got much
more information than that so the fact
is this might not be a device that
somebody would press a button to pause
maybe the person with it hung around
their neck would walk into a certain
location and that would pause the device
i really don't know so if you have used
one of these yourself in the past if
you've handed them out to visitors at
some location you're working at or you
know anything more about them then
please let us know in the comments
because as it stands this is a very rare
very unusual and really quite
undocumented walkman it'd be nice to try
and put that right but anyway hope
you've enjoyed this quick video that's
it for the moment as always thanks for
watching
[Music]
you