5 ms·

The part of this that amazes me is that while it seems plain to lots of folks what it -probably- is and how to record to tape, pop in a 'C64' and pull it in as

The part of this that amazes me is that while it seems plain to lots of folks what it -probably- is and how to record to tape, pop in a 'C64' and pull it in as a file, it seems that in all of the internet, barely dozens of people might have expressed having actually done it. That kinda makes me sad

7thaccount 6y ago
Dozens? I would assume that there are millions on the internet that grew up with these 8-bit computers or even punch cards. In fact, there is a significant retro scene alone of people collecting and even still writing and believe it or not SELLING games for the C64 and similar computers of the era. Check out Planet X-2 (I think for 8-bit) and Planet X-3 (I think for DOS). They were successful Kickstarter campaigns and shipped in physical form. There are many others too. I watched someone play "Hibernated 1 - This place is death" on an old computer and that game came out recently for a lot of different machines of the era. It's a pretty cool little fandom in my opinion.
- pmachinery 6y ago
  > Dozens? I would assume that there are millions on the internet that grew up with these 8-bit computers or even punch cards. They mean not many people will have recorded the sound from this record and then loaded it on to their C64. I doubt there are that many people who've even heard of this group[0], let alone owned anything anything by them. While this article is interesting, and something most people, including me, didn't know about, it's not something that was just discovered. The group's own label told people to look for a "hidden message", and gave a new computer to the guy who found it first.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigal_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigal_(band) [1] http://popdose.com/dw-dunphy-on-prodigal/ http://popdose.com/dw-dunphy-on-prodigal/
  - 7thaccount 6y ago
    Ah lol. Ok I understand now. My apologies and thanks for correcting!
  - jandrese 6y ago
    It should be noted that although it was terribly designed the Commodore 1541 disk drive was by far the most common peripheral sold with the machine. It was fairly uncommon for C64 owners to load off of tape unlike other 8 bit systems. Loading off of vinyl requires even more hardware hackery (building the adapter cable) so I wouldn't be surprised if you're right that only a few dozen people have ever done it. As terrible as the 1541 was, it was still better than the touchy unreliable tape drives of the day, which were generally just cheaply built audiocassette players. It was a factor in making the C64 so dominant in its era.
    - ptrincr 6y ago
      > It should be noted that although it was terribly designed the Commodore 1541 disk drive was by far the most common peripheral sold with the machine. It was fairly uncommon for C64 owners to load off of tape unlike other 8 bit systems I think this was true for the American market. However in Europe (and I believe in Australia as well) tape was the main medium people would have used. Certainly when the C64 was being marketed towards children as late as the early 90s, it was being sold as a cheap games machine and came with the trusty datasette. I don't think that it was until the Amiga 500(and of course the Atari st) where the disk format really took off for the home market this side of the pond.
    - stonogo 6y ago
      Do you have sales figures on this claim? The only person I knew with a 1541 was a college professor; most Commodore owners in my area didn't start getting floppy drives until they got extremely cheap on the secondhand market. The Commodore tape format was miles better than its competitors, since it had parity operations.
      - abiogenesis 6y ago
        I wouldn't say "miles better" as it was the slowest of all, despite the custom manufactured player/recorder (C2N Datasette). ZX Spectrum, for example, was able to save and load ~4 times faster using any cassette player with stock ROM routines.
    - 6y ago
dylan604 6y ago
I never tried recording my own cassettes. I wonder if a data cassette recorder only has 1 track compared to the 4 tracks an audio recorder would try to use.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  The data cassette recorders were more robustly built than regular tape recorders so that the motor speed wouldn't fluctuate as much. If a Pet Shop Boys recording was off a few percent, it wasn't a big deal. But if you were loading a program, you'd get errors if the speed drifted too far from spec.
- rusk 6y ago
  I don’t think it was 4 ... it seems a waste they didn’t use the extra channel actually ... but there was a track for each side.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    But it was 4 tracks. That's why you could use a regular cassette in a 4-track recorder. If you used a regular cassette in a 4-track recorder, you would hear the 2 tracks from Side A as normal, and then the 2 tracks from Side B in reverse.
    - rusk 6y ago
      Only if stereo. You only need 2 tracks for mono. One for each side.
      - dylan604 6y ago
        But that's not how audio cassettes worked, otherwise they would not be compatible. Consumer cassette players/recorders were 4 tracks.
        rusk 6y ago
        Yeah, duh. Two tracks for each side.
reaperducer 6y ago
Lots of people still do this today. Especially for old computers that are hard to get disk drives for. But instead of reading the files off an actual tape, they're store on MP3 players, or voice recorders. There are even programs, like the ones in the PET era, that will speed up the audio so that the "tapes" will load faster.
082349872349872 6y ago
For a similar but more modern experience, somewhere on youtube there's a linux distro encoded as video. IIRC it gives the command line necessary to decode back to iso or whatever, but my search-fu is failing me.

7thaccount 6y ago

Dozens? I would assume that there are millions on the internet that grew up with these 8-bit computers or even punch cards. In fact, there is a significant retro scene alone of people collecting and even still writing and believe it or not SELLING games for the C64 and similar computers of the era. Check out Planet X-2 (I think for 8-bit) and Planet X-3 (I think for DOS). They were successful Kickstarter campaigns and shipped in physical form. There are many others too. I watched someone play "Hibernated 1 - This place is death" on an old computer and that game came out recently for a lot of different machines of the era. It's a pretty cool little fandom in my opinion.

pmachinery 6y ago
> Dozens? I would assume that there are millions on the internet that grew up with these 8-bit computers or even punch cards. They mean not many people will have recorded the sound from this record and then loaded it on to their C64. I doubt there are that many people who've even heard of this group[0], let alone owned anything anything by them. While this article is interesting, and something most people, including me, didn't know about, it's not something that was just discovered. The group's own label told people to look for a "hidden message", and gave a new computer to the guy who found it first.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigal_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigal_(band) [1] http://popdose.com/dw-dunphy-on-prodigal/ http://popdose.com/dw-dunphy-on-prodigal/
- 7thaccount 6y ago
  Ah lol. Ok I understand now. My apologies and thanks for correcting!
- jandrese 6y ago
  It should be noted that although it was terribly designed the Commodore 1541 disk drive was by far the most common peripheral sold with the machine. It was fairly uncommon for C64 owners to load off of tape unlike other 8 bit systems. Loading off of vinyl requires even more hardware hackery (building the adapter cable) so I wouldn't be surprised if you're right that only a few dozen people have ever done it. As terrible as the 1541 was, it was still better than the touchy unreliable tape drives of the day, which were generally just cheaply built audiocassette players. It was a factor in making the C64 so dominant in its era.
  - ptrincr 6y ago
    > It should be noted that although it was terribly designed the Commodore 1541 disk drive was by far the most common peripheral sold with the machine. It was fairly uncommon for C64 owners to load off of tape unlike other 8 bit systems I think this was true for the American market. However in Europe (and I believe in Australia as well) tape was the main medium people would have used. Certainly when the C64 was being marketed towards children as late as the early 90s, it was being sold as a cheap games machine and came with the trusty datasette. I don't think that it was until the Amiga 500(and of course the Atari st) where the disk format really took off for the home market this side of the pond.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    Do you have sales figures on this claim? The only person I knew with a 1541 was a college professor; most Commodore owners in my area didn't start getting floppy drives until they got extremely cheap on the secondhand market. The Commodore tape format was miles better than its competitors, since it had parity operations.
    - abiogenesis 6y ago
      I wouldn't say "miles better" as it was the slowest of all, despite the custom manufactured player/recorder (C2N Datasette). ZX Spectrum, for example, was able to save and load ~4 times faster using any cassette player with stock ROM routines.
  - 6y ago

dylan604 6y ago

I never tried recording my own cassettes. I wonder if a data cassette recorder only has 1 track compared to the 4 tracks an audio recorder would try to use.

reaperducer 6y ago
The data cassette recorders were more robustly built than regular tape recorders so that the motor speed wouldn't fluctuate as much. If a Pet Shop Boys recording was off a few percent, it wasn't a big deal. But if you were loading a program, you'd get errors if the speed drifted too far from spec.
rusk 6y ago
I don’t think it was 4 ... it seems a waste they didn’t use the extra channel actually ... but there was a track for each side.
- dylan604 6y ago
  But it was 4 tracks. That's why you could use a regular cassette in a 4-track recorder. If you used a regular cassette in a 4-track recorder, you would hear the 2 tracks from Side A as normal, and then the 2 tracks from Side B in reverse.
  - rusk 6y ago
    Only if stereo. You only need 2 tracks for mono. One for each side.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      But that's not how audio cassettes worked, otherwise they would not be compatible. Consumer cassette players/recorders were 4 tracks.
      - rusk 6y ago
        Yeah, duh. Two tracks for each side.

reaperducer 6y ago

Lots of people still do this today. Especially for old computers that are hard to get disk drives for. But instead of reading the files off an actual tape, they're store on MP3 players, or voice recorders. There are even programs, like the ones in the PET era, that will speed up the audio so that the "tapes" will load faster.

082349872349872 6y ago

For a similar but more modern experience, somewhere on youtube there's a linux distro encoded as video. IIRC it gives the command line necessary to decode back to iso or whatever, but my search-fu is failing me.