Commodore - Tape Recorders.pdf

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GIACOMO M. VERNONI
COMMODORE
TAPE RECORDERS
First published in 2019
For more information visit
www.oldcomputr.com
All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced in
any form, or by any means – graphic,
electronic, or mechanical, including
photocopying or scanning – without the
prior permission of the author.
Content and pictures
© 2019 Giacomo M. Vernoni.
Cover by Raffaele Lodolo.
Original Sanyo recorder picture courtesy
of Chuck Hutchins.
Cover scan of the first version of “Your PET
External Cassette” courtesy of Erik Klein,
vintage-computer.com
Please share the original page link to
download the PDF not the PDF itself.
,
Version 1.0
COMMODORE TAPE RECORDERS
GIACOMO M. VERNONI
INTRODUCTION
Anyone who had a computer in
the late ‘70s and early’ 80s probably
used audiotapes, both common and
economic, as mass storage. The first
home computers had little RAM and
as a result the programs were quite
short: even if the data transfer speed
was very low, the loading times re-
mained acceptable.
The cost of RAM decreased fairly
quickly, and PETs went from 8KB to
32KB within three years. The record-
er was no longer a suitable support,
especially for professional use, so
Commodore put a double drive on
the market for its computers at the
beginning of ‘79.
The VIC 20, distributed in America
from the early months of 1981, had
only 5KB of RAM: the recorder was
offered as the only mass storage de-
vice for the computer, both for the
initial absence of a dedicated drive,
and for the price range in which the
VIC 20 was positioned.
When the Commodore 64 was re-
leased, developers began to use the
bigger amount of available memory:
tape media was so slow that most
programs took several minutes to
load. In North America, the cassette
recorder was soon replaced by the
1541 floppy drive; in Europe, the
drive was so expensive that most of
the games were released on tape for
the entire life of the Commodore 64.
Loading times were reduced using
“turbo tape” loaders.
Throughout the period of com-
mercialization of Commodore 8-bit
computers, the mechanics and cases
were redesigned to follow the aes-
thetic evolution of computers and op-
timize production costs; but essential-
ly the protocols and the speed of data
transfer were never updated from the
first 1977 model. An external recorder
for the Commodore PET 2001 bought
in 1978 could also be used with the
last Commodore 64C sold in the early
90s. For the 264 series computers (16,
116 and Plus/4), the connector was
changed, but the signals were iden-
tical: a simple adapter allowed the
use of “new” recorders on computers
with the previous connector.
This small publication presents
all the recorder models used or pro-
duced by Commodore for the pro-
fessional and home lines of their
8bit computers, in the most probable
chronological order. The information
currently available on recorders is
often incomplete, scattered among
sites and forums, or available in text
format only. The aim of this guide is
to present information in a complete
and orderly manner, providing the op-
portunity to know all the technical and
aesthetic variations of these products.
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