Why still use tape?

[Vic20-Ian]

I used to use a turbo loader like the one in this book with ¬L and ¬S commands on a C64.

It was pretty good. A full game could load in 10 tape counts but you needed to load the loader first.

On the Vic it will probably load in even less than 10 tape counts.

I still like loading in a tape on the Vic despite having a Final Expansion 3 with SD2IEC built in.

Using tape adds to the suspense and anticipation and I can go and make a cup of tea if it is a 16K game

If you get access to a C64 there were a wealth of turbo loaders, some even allowed you to play a game while the main game loaded. I remember "InvadeALoad" being impressive.

[pitcalco]

Yeah, turbo loaders are really great when using a short 10-15 minute tape with a single program or maybe just a few. I find it is a false economy when someone has saved a dozen or more programs on a 60-90 minute cassette tape and it is necessary to reload the turbo loader from the beginning each time I want to load a new program. I find I spend all the time rewinding and cueing and finding the right program that it would probably be just as well to have the complete program in one spot and then wind the tape directly to it.

I thought one solution would be to save the turbo program on a disc and then load from that before loading a program on tape, but for some reason that did not want to work.

[Jeff-20]

Is read reliability compromised in any way?


Sent from my iPhone 6 Beta using Tapatalk

[pitcalco]

I can only speak from my own experience with regard to turbo loaders, Jeff. Personally, I have not had any problems over and above those already associated with loading and saving programs on cassette tapes.

As I understand, and I stand to be corrected, a program must be saved using the turbo loader first in order for it to benefit from the turbo loader during loading. As opposed to the standard save, which actually writes the program to tape twice, a program that is turbo-saved (if you will) is only written once and then the turbo loader allows the computer to run the program after only being read from the tape once, cutting loading time in half, theoretically.

The question is then if such a cutting process can result in instability or read errors. So far, my answer has been: No.

[Mike]

It is true that those tape turbos do not write a copy of the data onto tape. However, that is not what mostly amounts to the speed increase. Rather, the tape turbos also increase the bit rate itself. The tape is still transported at the same speed however, and as a result, the bits are more tightly packed on the medium.

Because the bits now have less 'space' between them, in theory that requires a greater demand on the fidelity of the signal transmission and quality of the cassette. In practice however, there's still some leeway, and good tape turbos also cope with slightly different tape speeds, and most of them also include error detection.

There are tape turbos, BTW, which don't require one to load the turbo program first. In that case, these write a small header before the payload in standard tape format. That header contains the fast loader - as a consequence, those tape turbos then often actually don't feature a dedicated load command, just save.

It seems to promise that the Datasette can be used in much more efficient and powerful ways than are typically documented and even that they can be made to work faster than disk drives!

Only if you compare those tape turbos with the standard IEC protocol at ~400 bytes/second. But there are fast loaders for disk drives around as well, and then the natural speed order is restored.

For the VIC-20, the benefit of using tape turbos is, IMO, rather negligible - for an unexpanded VIC-20, that is. With a memory expansion (and more so on the C64), tape turbos are the only means to keep loading times bearable. And in any case, they don't help when it comes to FFing and rewinding the tape to get to the programm we actually want to load, and there's no file directory other than what has been scribbled in the tape inlay. It's the direct access of floppies, which makes tape usage a time penalty no one needs anymore ...

Using tape adds to the suspense and anticipation and I can go and make a cup of tea if it is a 16K game

... except for the hardcore retro experience.

[pitcalco]

Ah yes, Mike.

I knew I could count on you to straighten me out on the details.

[Vic20-Ian]

It is true that those tape turbos do not write a copy of the data onto tape.

Did you mean the Turbo Program code rather than data?

Is there a turbo loader / saver that produces a standalone turbo load on the Vic20 or C64?

It should be possible to have a Turbo Creator in memory that when activated saves quick loader code to tape first followed by a turbo saved program. i.e. The first small 'turbo loader only' would autorun and load the turbo saved main program at higher speed.

[Mike]

It is true that those tape turbos do not write a copy of the data onto tape.

Did you mean the Turbo Program code rather than data?

Neither.

The standard tape routines always follow the original recording of the header blocks (containing file name, type information and load address), memory blocks (a saved memory range) or data blocks (when you write sequential data on tape) with an exact copy. On load, this copy is compared with the original already being rewritten to memory, and when there's a difference, a ?LOAD ERROR is flagged.

Sometimes it is quite instructive to take a tape recording and play it back on audio equipment at low volume (you don't want to damage your ears or loudspeakers). You'll then hear:

- a prelude tone (most of it to skip the non-magnetic begin of the tape),
- the header data (uneven noise shortly at the beginning - file name and other data, followed by a more even tone),
- a short 'blip' indicating the copy follows,
- repeat of the header data (the copy),
- short silence
- again, a prelude tone,
- then the actual data of the memory (i.e. the program) written to tape,
- a short 'blip' again to indicate the copy,
- and, finally, the copy of the data now already in memory.

A quite common source of ?LOAD ERRORs is a cropped recording, where the copy of the payload was overwritten by the prelude tone of the following recording.

And, to repeat, the increased speed of the tape turbo does not result because they don't these copies (that would only give a 2x speed, anyway), but because the bit rate itself is increased. Most tape turbos guard against recording errors with checksums, which only require a minimal overhead.

Is there a turbo loader / saver that produces a standalone turbo load on the Vic20 or C64?

Yes. As I already wrote above, those tape turbos always preface the turbo saved programs with a small 'header' in standard tape format which contains the turbo load routine. That 'header' can be made small by shortening both prelude tones, and leaving out the copy of the payload. Within a few revolutions of the counter, that 'header' then loads the actual turbo load code to 828 .. 1019 (from the standard header block) and to 673 .. 771 (from the cropped memory block), and is then autostarted. And then follows the turbo saved data itself.

It should be possible to have a Turbo Creator in memory that when activated saves quick loader code to tape first followed by a turbo saved program. i.e. The first small 'turbo loader only' would autorun and load the turbo saved main program at higher speed.

That's exactly what Turbotape 2.0 and Q*Load (written by tlr) do.

[Vic20-Ian]

Got it - the second copy is omitted. Thanks.

I have used some Turbo loaders and had the same issues as described with one loader then multiple saved programs and having to rewind the loader.

those tape turbos always preface the turbo saved programs with a small 'header' in standard tape format which contains the turbo load routine.

I have only seen this automated in commercial loaders, not in something that I could use without loading the Turbo Loader then ¬L then loading the main code.

I will give TLR's loaders a try.

Thank you for the recommendation.

[ral-clan]

I just saw this thread several months after it was started. I would like to add another vote of support for using tape in 2014.
For those who enjoy the "tactile" experience of using real VIC-20 hardware, the datasette is an important part of that authentic experience.

Sure it's a bit of a pain - although not that much really, as the 1530 is very reliable and VIC-20 programs are short - but if you want to experience what it was like to use this machine in 1982 then using a datasette is a necessary part of that experience.

I have an IEC flash card device for my VIC-20, but I prefer to use real 1540/41 disk drives and datasettes.

[16KVIC20]

I like Tapes. They're my favourite way of loading. SD2IEC is great for new stuff, but for proper retro stuff tape every time for me.

I remember typing in a turbo load program from a magazine when I was about 15; unfortunately I could never get it to work and the tape it was saved on went to the big tape player in the sky a very long time ago.

I would like to try it again now, but I can't even remember which magazine it was in let alone the month or year. It was a UK computer magazine, covering various brands and systems, if I had to guess I would say it was 1985 or 1986, possibly 87. Popular Computer Weekly perhaps? I do recall it was an old magazine when I found it, and it was after the VIC 20's prime era.

[wimoos]

WimBasic provides for a speed saver/loader/merger to and from tape.

[rhurst]

How much faster is the tape load/save from WimBasic? I'm recalling that a big game (a VIC with a 16K memory expander) from tape loads after an intolerable wait of about 5-minutes, if it does not error on the first attempt.

[ral-clan]

I just thought of another advantage of cassette tape.

It's probably the only retro-computing media that is still being manufactured exactly as it was in the 1970s/80s, and that you can still buy off the shelf (although you might have to look a little bit, it's still possible) in a bricks-and-mortar store. I know I can still find brand new cassette tapes for sale at some of my local stores, whereas 5-1/4" DD floppy disks haven't been on the shelves around here for 25 years or more.

I'm not talking about online purchasing - of course if you look online you can buy almost anything. But even so, a lot of the DD floppy disks available online are new-old-stock, whereas there are still a few factories making Type I audio cassettes and even Type II if you look hard enough (although Type II are not recommended for datasette use).

[wimoos]

I do not have a datasette at my disposal at the moment, but I performed a test in VICE (at 100% of course ).
The speed save routine in WimBasic saved locations $1200 to $7F80 (a little over 27K) in less than 2 minutes.

The speed routines stem from ExBasic, and I have done little to no modifications to them. I do not know to what extent they compare to the other turbo loaders that are around (in code or in speed). I'm sure that the ExBasic/WimBasic code saves a memory block only once and that it plays the VIA's directly (i.e. not through an interrupt routine).

Regards,

Wim.