Plusdeck2

Price: US $150

http://www.plusdeck.com

If you're under 25, putting an audiocassette player into a PC must seem like a bizarre throwback, like retrofitting an automobile with wooden shafts so horses can pull it. But for those of Generation X and older, the Plusdeck2 [see photo, "Retro Drive"] has instant appeal. Sure, we wouldn't swap our iPods for anything, but many of us oldies in our late twenties, thirties, and forties still have boxes of tapes lurking in closets and basements. We've hung on to these audio artifacts, dating from a time before MP3 technology swept through the music world like a digital tidal wave, clinging to the faint belief that one day we would do something with them.

Thanks to the Plusdeck2 from BTO Co., in Seoul, South Korea, that day has come. Push a tape into the unit and a mouse click later the Plusdeck2 will begin converting those Depeche Mode and Wham! songs into MP3s, automatically dividing the tracks into separate files and switching from side A to side B. However, you'll have to annotate the files—adding song and artist names—yourself, because there is no audiocassette equivalent of the online CD identification database. The Plusdeck2 will also let you make recordings from your computer to tapes, useful for long journeys in cars without a CD player.

Designed for desktop PCs, the Plusdeck2 fits into a spare drive bay where a CD-ROM drive might normally go. Connecting the Plusdeck2 to your PC is very different from connecting a CD drive, though. The Plusdeck2 comes with a small interface card that is mounted in a regular expansion card slot, but unusually, the card doesn't connect to the computer's expansion bus or disk drive controllers. Rather, the Plusdeck2 software communicates with the Plusdeck2 through a short external cable strung between the interface card and the computer's serial port. Audio signals are fed in and out of the Plusdeck2 by means of another set of short cables that connect externally to your computer's sound card.

The Plusdeck2 relies on whatever sound card you already have installed to record its audio output for conversion to digital files, and this can lead to troubleshooting headaches. When the Plusdeck2 software produced nothing but MP3s full of silence, it took some close reading of the manual—a rough English translation from the original Korean—to discover that I had to adjust a particular recording option in my sound card settings to get it to work. BTO promises a better version of the manual will be available soon.

Because the Plusdeck2 has no equivalent of the high-speed dub option found on the dual tape-deck recorders of old, digital recording must happen in real time—that is, a 120-minute tape will take 120 minutes to convert. You can mute the sound output while this is going on, but I left the sound on and rather enjoyed the trips down memory lane that some of my old mix tapes produced. Occasionally, I'd hit on some forgotten gem that might otherwise have been lost forever, such as my sole remaining track by the Tennessee Surfers, a short-lived and utterly obscure Irish garage band from the early nineties, now digitally immortalized on my iPod.

Perhaps in letting us reconnect with the music of our earlier selves, the Plusdeck2 really delivers value for money, as well as finally justifying hanging on to all those dusty tapes in the closet.

Kids' Kits

Price: US $18 to $30

SmartLab: http://www.smartlabtoys.com

Norman & Globus: http://www.electrowiz.com

Many engineers and scientists report that their choice of vocation was sparked by some childhood experience; Einstein's interest in physics began when his father gave him a magnetic compass. Today, dozens of kits and educational toys for children help to nurture or inspire the Vint Cerfs and Carl Sagans of tomorrow.

We reviewed a number of kits from two manufacturers—Norman & Globus Inc., in El Sobrante, Calif., and SmartLab , a division of Becker & Mayer, in Bellevue, Wash.—by giving them to children and asking them (and their parents) what they thought about the products. We chose these two companies because of the emphasis they place on teaching children the science behind their kits. Although all educational kits come with instructions, these are sometimes just a few sheets of dense black-and-white type. In contrast, SmartLab's and Norman & Globus's kits come with colorful and lavishly illustrated explanatory booklets.

Individual kit reviews follow below. In general, it's clear that the age ranges given by the makers on these kits are only an extremely rough guide. Some children found the instructions too easy, while others found them harder going, even when the kits were targeted for the same age. Nearly all the children, however, enjoyed doing at least some of the projects in their kit, and most of the parents felt the kids learned something as well.

SmartLab

First Electronics is an introductory kit that lets children ages 7 and up connect a lightbulb, a motor, and a switch to a battery to make simple circuits. Eight-year-old Joell Adorno found connecting the wires frustrating, but overall he "loved" doing the various projects. He was able to understand most of the booklet, though a few words were too hard for him.

You Build It TV Remote Control for ages 8 and older comes with a printed-circuit board, a plastic case and keyboard, and an infrared LED that can be assembled into a working remote control. (A list of codes is included for most makes of televisions, so the finished device can be appropriately programmed.) James Wang, 11, had "fun" putting the control together and thought the explanatory booklet was "just right."

Electronics Lab is based on a simplified breadboard. Aimed at ages 9 and up, the kit has transistors, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, and buzzers that can all be hooked up into a variety of circuits. Thirteen-year-old Mike Stelmaszczyk enjoyed doing most of the circuits, even though they required "some patience." Mike also skipped past any explanatory facts in the booklet because they looked "uninteresting" but said afterward that he'd like to do more projects of a similar nature.

Norman & Globus

Energy Wiz is targeted at ages 7 and above. Several types of a model electric car can be built with the kit, including a solar car and a supercapacitor car. Patti Stelmaszczyk, 11, found building the cars fun, but she wished they had been more challenging to build and skipped over some of the projects as "too boring." Patti also felt the booklet was too simple, but her mother believed Patti did learn something about solar cars.

ElectroWizard Inventions invites children to build an electric motor, a telegraph, and a radio. Billed for ages 8 and up, the kit didn't impress 13-year-old Ross Weisman, who felt the kit was too easy, partly because he'd covered similar topics in school. Ross did only one or two projects before growing bored.

ElectroWiz Electricity is another introductory kit for younger children, aged 5 through 10. Basic circuits can be built that turn on bulbs, ring buzzers, and spin motors. Seven-year-old Brianna Caraballo was "very excited" about the kit, and every time she got something to work, she "showed it off to everyone" around. While Brianna needed help understanding and pronouncing some of the harder words in the booklet, in general she found it easy to understand, with one exception: how to connect alligator clips to a switch. This also stumped her mother, who felt that an instruction was missing from the book. Afterward, Brianna said she wanted to do more of these kinds of projects.

PHOTO: NORMAN & GLOBUS

Home Genetics: Do tabletop genetic engineering with this kit.

DNA Wizard is billed as being for ages 8 and up, but it is by far the most ambitious of all the kits and is probably best suited for a teen with close adult supervision. The kit allows children to build a model DNA double helix, then extract real DNA from fruit, and finally do actual genetic engineering by introducing a jellyfish gene into bacteria to make them glow.

Janine Wang, 13, took on the kit and successfully completed most of the projects but didn't succeed in creating glowing bacteria. She wanted to try again but noted there was only enough material for one attempt. Although Janine enjoyed the kit and loved playing with the model DNA, she felt that molecular biology involves "too much waiting" for results to persuade her to pursue more forays into the subject.