Conference hydra::amiga_v1

3584.0. "Cheap Tape Backup?" by SHARE::DOYLE () Wed Mar 14 1990 10:08

  
  For those more smarter than I bear with me...
   
	Next question, does anyone remember the C64 Dattasette?? 
    	I know it was super slow, but one of the Cartridges Datel put out,
	I think is was the "Action Replay" or something like that, sped up
  the process to a tolerable level by compressing programs in memory down
  to their smallest possible size and attaching a header to it, much like 
  PowerPacker, and then saved it to tape using their "Turbo Tape" option.
    Many Programs that would usually take 20 min to load, took less than a
  minute to load (around 30 seconds), also I could fit about 50 programs on
  a thirty min tape (about 10 disks using both sides).
  	How hard would it be to install the same type of tape backup for the 
  Ami? Not that I'd expect to run executable programs from it, but it be nice 
  for a cheap backup of floppy disks that are lhwarped or such.
	As for reliability, I never had any problems with my old setup.
	After all, this was a sequential device that used a tape counter.
	The tapes were cheap enough...
	I'd think it'd be great (if it worked).

							Thanks
             							Ed

    
    boo, hisss.  I spent a year with a cassette tape Atari 400 system.
    Those are what is known as the dark days of home computing :-)
    Compare the size of the typical amiga program to a C64 program.
    Then consider how that might increase the possibility of getting
    a read/write error while loading it.
    
    I don't know much about the C64 Datasette, I believe it has a serial
    interface that runs at 2400 bps.  So it might be possible to talk to
    it if you can get the voltages and handshaking right.
    
    I remember Compute's Turbo Tape article, there is something seriously
    wrong with the world when a cassette tape drive can load a program
    faster than CBM's floppy disk drive.
    
    -Dave
    p.s. you might want to check with the folks who do the C64 emulators,
    I think I saw mention of an adapter that let you use C64 peripherals on
    an Amiga, don't know if that included the tape drive.