A friend told me he had just a seen a walkman that has the cassette poking out from under the door. I immediately asked him to get it for me without knowing what it was. Turns out it's a SuperTech MiniMax CP/86 I did a quick search, and there are some pics online. There's also a short discussion about it on the old forum, but it's still a relatively obscure model. So I'll post about it here. When not in use it's as thick as a regular walkman, but it's only the height of a cassette. When a cassette is inserted, it will expand a bit. This feels like a sort of a mix between Toshiba's approach of making the cassette stick out the body and Sony's approach of a sliding body of sorts. Then naming it similar to Hitachi's comparable offering. I'm not aware of any other walkman using this approach. Though to be honest, I'm not even aware of this model 'till last week. So I'll be happy to find out if anyone knows of any other similar walkmans. Now on to the walkman itself. It's a very basic model, evident by the only having 3 transport buttons. As expected, it's using a variant of the usual mechanism used by these 3 button transport walkmans. It's a decently built one though, many metal parts and the motor is still made in japan. The play button have been moved from their usual position for this type of mechanism. Overall, it's a regular entry-tier unit. It's selling point being being the compact size and the novelty of a unique sliding mechanism. The entire bottom part of the door is a tray that extends downwards when you put a cassette in. Unlike Sony's sliding system, this one's spring loaded, so the cassette will pop up when you open the door. It works quite nicely I think, except for the fact that it makes the walkman unable to "stand" upright. Personally I also think it'll be nicer if the tray is transparent. There was some corrosion on this unit, but it still works and the sound is decent.
