How many games could I fit on a 120 minute tape?

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:25 pm

Recentlly I've had the urge to go on Ebay and buy a Datassette and then get a 120 minute cassette tape and try to fit as many games as possible on it. I'd call it THE ULTIMATE VIC-20 COLLECTION. I could even make copies with a fancy label and packaging if there's enough interest.

Assuming that each game will be single loading and be an average, about 3K (so that they run on an unexapnded VIC-20), how many games could I fit on 120 minutes of tape?

There's also a TURBO TAPE application that allows you to save programs on less tape space (one doesn't need turbo tape to load these programs afterwards), so I could probably save even more games on this hypothetical "ultimate" tape.

This is just a passing fancy of mine--first I'd need an actual Datassette to pull it off and I would probably lose interest after saving 20 games or so. But it would be the type of collection for the hardcore "purist" who believes that you're not having a true, legitimate VIC-20 gaming experience unless you wait several minutes for a game to finish loading before you run it.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:30 pm

After some googling, I found out the following:

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Datassette

The datassette accepts standard cassette tapes, and a 90-minutes tape (45 minutes on each side) will hold on the order of 150 kilobytes on each side if no compression or fast loader is used.

So that would be 400 kilobytes in total (120 minutes of tape) which could be 133 games or so. I could double that by using a fast loader because the FL does not save the program twice as a normal save-to-tape routine normally does.

bokvamme · Post by **bokvamme** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:38 pm

You would need 2-3 tapes for all tape games/programs.

Leeeeee · Post by **Leeeeee** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:57 pm

You should limit yourself to using 60 minute or shorter tapes for data storage as the longer tapes are thinner and far less reliable.

Lee.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:04 pm

Leeeeee wrote:You should limit yourself to using 60 minute or shorter tapes for data storage as the longer tapes are thinner and far less reliable.

Lee.

But with 120 minutes you can store TWICE as many games!

How about we compromise and settle for 90?

I'm thinking of making this tape as sort of a joke more than anything, I wonder if anyone has actually done something like this.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:09 pm

Leeeeee wrote:You should limit yourself to using 60 minute or shorter tapes for data storage as the longer tapes are thinner and far less reliable.

Lee.

Also the longer tapes are more likely to stretch. No biggie for music, but for data - trouble.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:17 pm

ral-clan wrote:Also the longer tapes are more likely to stretch. No biggie for music, but for data - trouble.

Yeah, that's true. I didn't use the Datassette much back in the day (I didn't own one with my first VIC-20) but my memories of them basically consisted of crossing our fingers and HOPE/PRAY that the game would load. Sometimes, it would take 3-4 tries to successfully load a game.

I thought of something funny though, we could make a cassette version of the MEGA-CART and just call it the MEGA-TAPE

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:02 pm

ral-clan wrote:Also the longer tapes are more likely to stretch. No biggie for music, but for data - trouble.

I'm almost sure I remember reading something (back in the day) that said data tapes shouldn't be more than 10 minutes long and I couldn't figure out why and my father (RIP) suggested that stretching might be the reason. Funny how these things come back to you.

Leeeeee · Post by **Leeeeee** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:24 pm

The tape used for the shorter cassettes is the same thickness as that used in the 60 minute tapes. They just put less in.

Lee.

Ian Colquhoun · Post by **Ian Colquhoun** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 10:07 pm

I almost always used 30 minute tapes back in the day and never had a problem with any of them. The one 90 minute tape I had was the only tape I ever suffered read errors from.

Ghislain, that's one giant avatar you've got there!

Post by **Jeff-20** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:27 pm

Ian Colquhoun wrote:Ghislain, that's one giant avatar you've got there!

He enlarged it so you wouldn't lose track of your hit points.

Pedro Lambrini · Post by **Pedro Lambrini** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 3:01 am

Sounds like a great idea. I thought of something similar but I thought 2 60 minute tapes in one of those double size boxes that loads of C64 games came in. That way there's more space for some decent artwork and a readable list of games. Just my tuppence worth.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:51 am

I still have a few C10s (10 minute cassettes) left over from the good old early days when every computer was using cassettes for storage. They are handy in that you don't have to search forever to find a game. Also, some of them look pretty cool (have sort of retro looking computer style graphics on them to make them look "serious").

I was going to mention Ghislain's new huge avatar too. It fills a quarter of my screen and pushes the messages over to the right - but I thought I'd seem like a whiner - but now that Ian has mentioned it, I feel less self concious!

I guess Ghislain has a huge widescreen monitor at home set at high resolution and doesn't notice it.

DELETED · Post by **DELETED** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:56 am

DELETED

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:05 am

MRaider wrote:
Ghislain wrote:I wonder if anyone has actually done something like this.
Only every single VIC-20 owner with a Datasette and no disk drive. !

I did this too "back in the day". It was hard to get C120 cassettes so I used C60s and C90s when I didn't have C10s.

But, did any of you guys buy those ultra cheap three packs of C60 cassettes that came in a plastic pouch? The cassettes came without cases. As a kid, I would ask my mom to pick these up for me from Canadian Tire and K-Mart because for $2 I could get three cassettes (which meant a lot as a kid).

The quality, of course, was absolutely abysmal. I'm sure they shed oxide on the tape heads like crazy. Strangely, though a lot of them worked for many years. I was even able to recover some data from a few of these tapes (the very rare software for the Data-20 80 column cartridge) a few years ago (it's now on Zimmers).

In Canada, these types of tapes were marketed under the "Grand Prix" trademark. Also the "Canadian Tire" trademark, and "Miracle Beaucoup" (a grocery store) marks (the latter two being in-store generic brands).