Posted by Mike Biel (posted by Gerry Wilkinson) on October 21, 1998 at 15:05:59:
Michael Muderick wrote:
ITA was owned by Triangle publications-Annenberg, Channel 6 etc. They also made consoles and didn't we have their cart machines. No we didn't. Channel 6 did. I remember.
Check your memory again. WE DID have the ITA cart machines. WFIL used a cart machine that had special carts that were about 8-inches square and were not Fidelipac compatable. I have one of those carts somewhere--I took one that was defective. I forget the name on the label of the cart. I have never seen these carts used anywhere else.
The ITA cart machines that we had at WRTI were horrible. The pinch roller always was held upright and stayed in the machine until the play button was pressed. Then two solenoids went to work. The first one raised the pinch roller up vertically, and then the second one would bring it horizontally over to the capstan. Ker--chunk. Very often one of the two solenoids failed. If the second one failed we would have just the Ker sound. Ker. Ker. Ker, eetc. If the first one failed it would be Ker, Ker, Ker, etc. Lousy design. Ever other manufacturer had the pinch roller raised up thru an arc. The angle of the ITA pinch roller never changed.