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Something my dad did for me...
Today, what's left of it, is what would have been my dad's 75th birthday, but he never made it past 50.
Here's something he did for me, other than... buy me a ZX81 and then a Spectrum +2, both when I was still in single figures. Both of these needed a hefty stash of blank tapes, or second-hand tapes that had been discarded, and as he spent half his life working with computers (from room-filling mainframes to IBM PCs), sometimes he'd bring home a stash of tapes from work that the company no longer needed because they'd bought new devices that used those new-fangled disc drives, and the tapes had been thrown in the back of a cupboard and forgotten about until then. They weren't usually (on the face of it) regular audio tapes, either - they were usually branded with computing company logos like ICL, but unlike the C15 computer cassettes we'd get from Boots or W.H. Smith, these were usually C90 - the length we're not supposed to use with micros because the tape's too thin and might get snagged in the cheap and nasty tape recorders that go with them, whether attached to the machine +2/CPC/PET style or not.
I think these were regular audio cassettes just branded a different way, probably used for mass backup the way an Iomega Jaz drive would be ten years afterwards, and I don't remember having any problems with them - the amount of storage space I could get from one of those C90s was handy for writing the kind of programs I would do as a nine-year-old or there abouts (one of which bubbled to the surface after 15 years and was so crap it was submitted to CSSCGC 2004!). And I usually had to share the tape supply with my brother, who had a Dragon 32. But there was always one tape that flummoxed both our machines:
The Verbatim Data cassette. Actually designed for data, so it says, with its weird notch cut out of the case and plastic flaps on top that could be folded out of the way to expose the write-protect hole and folded back again at will. So why was this the tape that never, ever worked? The signal it recorded was so diabolically bad, whether I used it on my +2 or my brother's Dragon, nothing could ever be loaded from it. I tried recording some music on one of these once, just to see what would happen, and it was like listening to it underwater. No wonder the computers didn't stand a chance. And this is the only Verbatim-branded media I've ever had trouble with - I've used their 3.5" floppy discs, I've used their CD-R(W)s, DVD±R(W)s (even the dual layer version) and now their recordable Blu-Rays as well, and never had any trouble. It was just these data cassettes that let me down.
Did anyone else try these back in the day, did you get the same results - or were they made a different way, with a different magnetic compound on the tape, for a completely different method of reading and writing the data that regular tape recorders couldn't handle? It's a mystery that's gone unsolved for somewhere around 30 years.
I think I'll have another beer (maybe more) in memory of Peter Alan Waterman, 15/11/1942 - 1/7/1993. I know it's only Banks's Amber Bitter at 90p a bottle, but the sooner I drink the stash I've got, the sooner I can re-use those bottles to house my hand-crafted cider. Cheers, dad - for the tapes, for the ZX81 for Christmas 1983, and the Spectrum +2 four years after that. 30 years later, plus or minus a couple of months, here I am still buying more bits for it, and making those bits work. Eventually.
Also, I'll never forget his comment sometime in the mid-80s where he saw a woman wearing a hat with an absurdly wide brim. "Look at that", he said, "it looks like a one-megabyte disc!" I wonder what he'd have made of the 32 GB SD card lying idle next to me on the desk - it filled up with music for the Parrot MKi9200 in my car, and I had to upgrade to a 64 GB USB stick instead. And that's not even the largest storage capacity we have now, nor is it the smallest physical form.
Here's something he did for me, other than... buy me a ZX81 and then a Spectrum +2, both when I was still in single figures. Both of these needed a hefty stash of blank tapes, or second-hand tapes that had been discarded, and as he spent half his life working with computers (from room-filling mainframes to IBM PCs), sometimes he'd bring home a stash of tapes from work that the company no longer needed because they'd bought new devices that used those new-fangled disc drives, and the tapes had been thrown in the back of a cupboard and forgotten about until then. They weren't usually (on the face of it) regular audio tapes, either - they were usually branded with computing company logos like ICL, but unlike the C15 computer cassettes we'd get from Boots or W.H. Smith, these were usually C90 - the length we're not supposed to use with micros because the tape's too thin and might get snagged in the cheap and nasty tape recorders that go with them, whether attached to the machine +2/CPC/PET style or not.
I think these were regular audio cassettes just branded a different way, probably used for mass backup the way an Iomega Jaz drive would be ten years afterwards, and I don't remember having any problems with them - the amount of storage space I could get from one of those C90s was handy for writing the kind of programs I would do as a nine-year-old or there abouts (one of which bubbled to the surface after 15 years and was so crap it was submitted to CSSCGC 2004!). And I usually had to share the tape supply with my brother, who had a Dragon 32. But there was always one tape that flummoxed both our machines:
The Verbatim Data cassette. Actually designed for data, so it says, with its weird notch cut out of the case and plastic flaps on top that could be folded out of the way to expose the write-protect hole and folded back again at will. So why was this the tape that never, ever worked? The signal it recorded was so diabolically bad, whether I used it on my +2 or my brother's Dragon, nothing could ever be loaded from it. I tried recording some music on one of these once, just to see what would happen, and it was like listening to it underwater. No wonder the computers didn't stand a chance. And this is the only Verbatim-branded media I've ever had trouble with - I've used their 3.5" floppy discs, I've used their CD-R(W)s, DVD±R(W)s (even the dual layer version) and now their recordable Blu-Rays as well, and never had any trouble. It was just these data cassettes that let me down.
Did anyone else try these back in the day, did you get the same results - or were they made a different way, with a different magnetic compound on the tape, for a completely different method of reading and writing the data that regular tape recorders couldn't handle? It's a mystery that's gone unsolved for somewhere around 30 years.
I think I'll have another beer (maybe more) in memory of Peter Alan Waterman, 15/11/1942 - 1/7/1993. I know it's only Banks's Amber Bitter at 90p a bottle, but the sooner I drink the stash I've got, the sooner I can re-use those bottles to house my hand-crafted cider. Cheers, dad - for the tapes, for the ZX81 for Christmas 1983, and the Spectrum +2 four years after that. 30 years later, plus or minus a couple of months, here I am still buying more bits for it, and making those bits work. Eventually.
Also, I'll never forget his comment sometime in the mid-80s where he saw a woman wearing a hat with an absurdly wide brim. "Look at that", he said, "it looks like a one-megabyte disc!" I wonder what he'd have made of the 32 GB SD card lying idle next to me on the desk - it filled up with music for the Parrot MKi9200 in my car, and I had to upgrade to a 64 GB USB stick instead. And that's not even the largest storage capacity we have now, nor is it the smallest physical form.
Post edited by The Mighty Dopethrone on
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Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
My dads the main influence that got me into computers and music too so similar in away to this thread, R.I.P Dad
I turned out it was what was know as a streamer cassette. It was designed to be used in specialized tape drives, ran at a much higher speed, stored data in four separate tracks, and only used one side. They were mostly used for backing up data.
Here’s MCM/800. Scroll down and you’ll see that the cassette in the picture on the left has the same notch.
Here’s MFE Model 260, a specialized tape drive. You can’t see the notch, but you can see that write-protect tabs and the fact that it only has one head.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Member of the team that discovered, analyzed, and detailed the floating bus behavior on the ZX Spectrum +2A/+3.
A few Spectrum game fixes.
Oh by the way take a look at ebay for the prices of the T 300h tapes, you might be surprised.
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
But my ma and my gran did more than I could ever repay, especially my gran.
....and I really miss both of them sometimes.
Especially with it being November it's my birthday in 3 days, and it's 3 years since my ma died in 6 days....Talk about bittersweet.
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
Tapeheads, as I'd expect, have all the details - and from what I can deduce from their very technical details, using one of these in a Spectrum (or Amstrad, Dragon, Oric, or anything else that used a regular bog-standard cassette deck) was like trying to use a chrome tape, though with none of the audio benefits that it provides. It still seems very odd, though, that something which is still just a length of plastic tape with a magnetically programmable oxide layer bound to it, works only with one very specific type of device, rather than anything designed to fit the Philips Compact Cassette standard from 1964 onwards.
I see the MFE brochure is from 1973, so those Verbatim cassettes may well have been 14 years old already by the time they fell into my hands. There's no date on the MCM brochure but it looks like it's from the 1970s - especially judging by the size of the hand that's inserting the disc in the drive just below the tape, that's the old 8" size, not 5¼".
As for the CC standard, when it was developed, the audio quality it provided was very poor. It took a few decades before Metal tapes and Dolby sound reduction could bring it so close to CD quality it was virtually indistinguishable. The biggest problem, at least originally, was the low speed of the medium.
My understanding is that this limitation quickly became apparent to engineers, so when a data storage format using the same physical enclosure and medium was envisioned, they naturally increased the speed and designed a special data storage/retrieval format to fit the task.
While it might technically be possible to play back such tapes through an audio amplification circuitry, the systems were not designed to stay within the confines of the (relatively limited) audio frequency range.
Anyway, it was a nice trip down memory lane wish a side order of minor mystery solving.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Member of the team that discovered, analyzed, and detailed the floating bus behavior on the ZX Spectrum +2A/+3.
A few Spectrum game fixes.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Member of the team that discovered, analyzed, and detailed the floating bus behavior on the ZX Spectrum +2A/+3.
A few Spectrum game fixes.