Who introduced the home computer cassette drive?

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Boray
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Who introduced the home computer cassette drive?

Post by Boray »

Which company came up with the brilliant idea of using standard audio cassettes for data storage on home computers?
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English Invader
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Post by English Invader »

Boray
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Post by Boray »

It only says it was one of the first...
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Jeff-20
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Post by Jeff-20 »

I did!

Ok, I lied. But I did come across and unusual invention by some Japanese team patented 2001... The date makes this so strange.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6227477/fulltext.html
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English Invader
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Post by English Invader »

Boray wrote:It only says it was one of the first...
One of the first means it could be the first :lol: . In the absence of a more precise answer, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

I am slightly biased, though. I have an HP laptop and Hewlett is a former sponsor of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club :lol: .
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Post by PaulQ »

This web site mentions the first year magnetic tape was used for computer data storage was in 1951. It also mentions the Vic 20:

http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/04/08/the ... -pictures/

So far, I've discovered that the Wang 3300 made use of a dual cassette tape drive in 1970, which clearly predates Apple:

http://www.thebattles.net/wang/3300/3300press.pdf

My guess is that companies like Wang started to look for computer applications for the audio cassette tape as soon as it was introduced.
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Post by Bacon »

As noted above, cassettes were already in use with small computers long before there were home computers. On top of that, the home computer's direct ancestors, the first microcomputers (Altair, KIM-1, SOL 20, Apple I, etc.) had a tape interface either built-in or as a popular option. There was even a standard agreed upon (in 1976?) called the Kansas City standard, which allowed a tape recorded on one brand of computer to be read on another brand. What a thought.
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Mike
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Post by Mike »

Jeff-20 wrote:Ok, I lied. But I did come across and unusual invention by some Japanese team patented 2001... The date makes this so strange.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6227477/fulltext.html
From what I could infer from the text, the patent "just" covers a slight mechanical alteration to a VHS (?) tape, so a user can't accidentally insert such a tape into a video recorder, which has been designated to store data, and vice versa.

Those patent attorneys just let such patent slip through ...

IIRC, there had been a solution before, which records data in form of a standard PAL, or NTSC signal (visible as coloured blocks on screen) which won't damage a TV, if such a tape would have accidently been viewed - obviating the need for a mechanical obstruction in the first case.
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Post by carlsson »

I always wondered about Basicode. While it surely is doable having interpreters running the same tokenized code on different computers, can all computers be programmed to decode the same analog signals from a tape? In particular in the case of the VIC which gets a set of digital data, could you make it load programs saved on a completely different computer? It is hard enough to read C64 tapes on a VIC-20 due to slight timing differences.
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