Abstract: A mechanism for driving a tape recorder includes a selection lever supporting a pair of gears and selectively movable to bring the gears into mesh with gears on takeup and supply reels or out of mesh therewith under the control of a swing arm angularly movable in response to rotation of a cam plate having different cam faces for providing different modes of operation of the tape recorder. One of a pair of concentric integral gears is held at all times in mesh with one of the gears on the selection lever, and the other concentric gear is held in mesh with a gear on a joint arm, which can be brought into mesh with a motor gearing by a control arm only when the cam plate is held at rest.

Abstract: A mode control device for a cassette tape recorder in which operational functions are combined with a small number of operational buttons or keys. A slidably-mounted electric source operation lever operates an electric source switch and also is slidable to a position causing the ejection of a tape cassette. A slidably-mounted function lever operates in conjunction with the electric source operation lever to change a tape drive between recording, stop, playback and rewinding modes with the function lever being prevented from operating during the OFF state of the electric source operation lever. When the electric source operation lever is at an ON position and the function lever is in a stop mode position, a magnetic recording and erase head and a pinch roller are in a position close to their respective contact positions so that the required manual force for moving to the recording or playback modes is quite small.